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Copyright, 1907 

BY 

TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



Public Education in Upper Canada 



Herbert Thomas John Coleman 



v^ 



PUBLISHED BY 

TEACHERS COLLEGE 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
NEW YORK 

1907. 



V 



BRANDOW PRINTING CO., 
ALBANY, N. Y. 







CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I Page 9 

THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND 
Purpose of chapter. — Early conditions; French mihtary posts; French 
settlers in Upper Canada prior to 1791. — The Loj^alist emigration; nation- 
alities represented; assistance furnished by British Government; the chief 
Loyalist settlements. — Later emigration from the United States. — Emi- 
gration from Europe; almost wholly from the British Isles; segregation 
of race elements ; one notable exception ; unfortunate result of the policy 
of segregation. — Abuses in the granting of land ; Judge Thorpe's criti- 
cisms, 1807; Mr. Gourlay's investigations, 1817-18; cumulative effect of 
Government's policy. — The structure and character of the Provincial Gov- 
ernment; large powers of Executive; slight powers possessed by House 
of Assembly ; chief functions of the latter body. — Municipal organization 
of the Province ; the District ; the County ; the Township ; the School 
District. — Religious denominations ; contemporary accounts of numerical 
standing and privileges enjoyed; the struggle for equal rights; the Clergy- 
Reserves ; the right to solemnize marriage. — General conditions of life ; 
roads; traveling; communication with Great Britain; newspapers; post- 
offices. — Conclusion. 

CHAPTER II Page 21 

THE LAND GRANTS FOR SCHOOLS 
Educational policy of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, 1792- 
1796; his correspondence with the British Government; the defects of his 
policy. — The Royal Land Grant of 1797; its chief provisions. — University 
the earliest and chief beneficiary from Land Grant; reasons therefor; the 
Reverend John Strachan and his influence in Provincial politics. — Steps 
taken to dispose of School lands for University purposes; action of 
Executive Council, 1819; exchange of University lands for more valua- 
able Crown Reserves, 1827; value of University Endowment, 1839-1842. — 
Endowment from University lands of " National " Schools and Upper 
Canada College. — Action of House of Assembl}', 1831, looking to the 
realization of a fund for Grammar and Common Schools; failure of that 
body to appreciate difficulties of the situation ; report of the Executive 
Council on School Lands, 1831 ; 250,000 acres granted to Grammar Schools, 
1839. — Movement for a special endowment for Common Schools ; legis- 
lative proceedings in this regard, 1816, 1831, 1832, 1833 ; recommendations 
of Lieutenant-Governor, 1835; failure of Common School Endowment 
Bill, 1839 ; eventual success of movement, 1849. — Effect on educational 
legislation of the political complications of the time. 



4 Contents. 

CHAPTER III Page 33 

THE DISTRICT GRAMMAR SCHOOL — LEGISLATIVE AND 
ADMINISTRATIVE ASPECTS 
Legislative proceedings prior to 1807. — The District (Grammar) School 
Act of 1807 ; its chief provisions ; Act made permanent in 1808 ; popular 
dissatisfaction with the Act as reflected in proceedings of the House of 
Assembly, 1808-1816; the Common School Act of 1816 a concession to 
this popular sentiment; continued agitation against the act, 1817-1819. — 
The District Grammar School Amendment Act, 1819; analysis of its 
contents. — Eounding of new Grammar Schools, 1819-1839. — The General 
Board of Education (1823-1833) in its relations to the Grammar Schools. 
— Grammar Schools under the direction of the Council of King's College, 
1833-1841. — Changes in administration of Grammar Schools introduced 
by Act of 1839. — The union of Upper and Lower Canada, 1841, and the 
Grammar School Act of that year. — General attitude of the Provincial 
Government towards Grammar Schools during the period under con- 
sideration. 

CHAPTER IV Page 44 

THE DISTRICT GRAMMAR SCHOOL — ITS PECULIAR 
FEATURES 
The Reverend John Strachan, the most famous of the Grammar School 
masters; his connection with the schools at Cornwall and York; his 
thoroughness ; his fondness for scientific study ; his advocacy of a liberal 
curriculum; his methods as a teacher. — Later masters of the Grammar 
School at York ; Mr. Samuel Armour ; the Reverend Thomas Phillips. — 
Conditions in other Grammar Schools of the Province ; the Midland Dis- 
trict Grammar School (at Kingston) ; the Eastern District Grammar 
School (at Cornwall) ; the Ottawa District Grammar School; the Western 
District Grammar School (at Sandwich) ; the Johnstown District Gram- 
mar School (at Brockville). — Characteristics of the Grammar School as 
an institution. — Upper Canada College, the " superior " Grammar School 
at York; its distinguishing features; its value as supplying, for the time 
being, the place of a University ; its limitations ; its history subsequent 
to 1841. 

CHAPTER V Page 55 

THE COMMON SCHOOL— ITS EXTERNAL HISTORY 
No provision for elementary schools in the Land Grant of 1797. — 
Beginnings of elementary education in the Province ; Garrison Schools ; 
other private schools, 1789-1810. — Early certification of teachers. — An 
early petition for Government aid of elementary schools. — The Common 
School Act of 1816 ; its chief provisions ; defects of the Act. — The Com- 
mon School Act of 1820. — The Common School Act of 1824; provision for 
Sunday Schools ; recognition of a General Board of Education ; facts con- 
cerning this body; chief cause of its discontinuance. — Increase of annual 
grant to Common Schools, 1835. — Unsuccessful Common School Bills 
introduced in House of Assembly, 1830-1840; Mr. William Buell, Jr.'s 



Contents. 5 

Bill; Mr. Mahlon Burwell's Bill; visit of Dr. Charles Duncombe to the 
United States ; his report and draft of a Common School Bill. — The Com- 
mon School Act of 1841 ; its chief provisions. — Subsequent legislation. 

CHAPTER VI Page 68 

THE COMMON SCHOOL — ITS ESSENTIAL CHARACTER- 
ISTICS 
Incompleteness of data at hand. — Schools in keeping with pioneer 
conditions. — Pioneer life, as a whole, unfavorable to formal education. — 
Some compensating features; Dr. Bourinot quoted. — Some early school- 
houses; description (1818) of the school buildings of the time. — Leading 
types of the early schoolmaster. — Prevalence of American teachers ; atti- 
tude towards them by the authorities; characterization of them by writers 
of the time. — The Common School curriculum and text-books ; scarcity 
of the latter; methods of instruction; daily program of the Common 
School at York, 1821. — American text-books in the schools; agitation 
against them ; their eventual exclusion. — Efforts of the General Board 
of Education to meet the local need. — Chief cause of the low state of the 
Common Schools during this period. 

CHAPTER VII Page 79 

THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN PUBLIC EDUCATION — THE 
GRAMMAR AND THE COMMON SCHOOLS 

General belief in Upper Canada in the necessity of religious instruction 
in the schools; difference of opinion as to the form it should take; 
" Separate Schools " the answer, so far as the Roman Catholics are con- 
cerned ; gradual relaxing of religious requirement in Common Schools 
attended by Protestants. 

The Church of England and the Grammar Schools; charge of Anglican 
domination made by the United Presbytery of Upper Canada in 1830; 
reply of a Committee of the Legislative Council; the Presbytery reiterates 
its charges ; confessedly Anglican character of Upper Canada College. 

The Church of England and the Common Schools; a Provincial system 
of Church of England National Schools projected, 1820; Royal approval 
of the plan, 1823; introduction of the systems of both Bell and Lancaster 
in Upper Canada ; details of the establishment of the Central National 
School at York ; the Appleton Case ; Parliamentary investigation and 
report ; continuation of the Central National School till 1844. 

Conclusion ; the Appleton Case illustrates but one phase of the struggle 
going on in the Province at the time. 

CHAPTER VIII Page 91 

THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN PUBLIC EDUCATION — THE 
PROVISIONAL UNIVERSITY 
The two chief parties in the University controversy. — The University 
Charter of 1827 ; Dr. Strachan's visit to England ; his "Appeal " on behalf 
of the University; his conception of its purpose; the chief provisions of 
the charter. — The protest of the House of Assembly in 1828 against the 
charter; petition to the King. — Action of the House of Assembly and of 



6 Contents. 

the Legislative Council in regard to the charter, 1829.— Popular petition 
to the Imperial Parliament, 1830. — The Charter Amendment bills of 1833 
and 1836; passed by House of Assembly, but rejected by Council; reasons 
given for this rejection. — Attitude of Imperial Gevernment on the Uni* 
versity question; report of a Committee of the House of Commons, 1828; 
instructions of Colonial office to Sir John Colborne, 1828; request for a 
surrender of the charter, 1831 ; refusal of the College Council and reasons 
therefor. — The Charter Amendment Act of 1837; its chief provisions. — 
A Presbyterian professorship of theology in King's College; suggested by 
Committee of Imperial House of Commons, 1828; agitated by United 
Presbytery of Upper Canada from 1831 onward; approved by Legislative 
Council, 1837. — Claims of Presbyterians ignored by King's College Coun- 
cil, 1837; appeal to the British Colonial Office; adverse report of the 
Educational Commission of 1839. — Act incorporating the Presbyterian 
University of Kingston, 1840; provision for the endowment of a Chair of 
Theology in the institution from King's College funds. — Name of the 
institution changed by Royal Charter in 1841 to Queen's College; no 
mention in the charter of a Chair of Theology, hence grant from King's 
College withheld. — The University Act of 1849 and the complete secu- 
larization of King's College; its name changed to the University of 
Toronto. 

CHAPTER IX Page 102 

EDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES IN ONTARIO, 184^1906 

The Elementary Schools: Work of Dr. Ryerson; the School Act of 
1871; appointment of a Minister of Education, 1876; Dr. J. H. Sangster's 
description of the public schools of 1850; forces which wrought a change 
for the better. — Detailed character of the present School Law. 

Secondary Schools: The District Grammar School of 1850. — Reforms 
of 1853. — Changes made by School Act of 1871. — Subsequent changes. — 
Present high school conditions. 

Normal and Model Schools: Dr. Ryerson's visit to Europe and the 
United States. — Founding of the Provincial Normal School at Toronto. — 
Opposition to the Normal School idea. — Normal School course made 
purely professional in 1871. — Other Normal Schools established. — Com- 
mon characteristics of these schools. — The Ontario Normal College. — 
Recently established Faculty of Education in the University of Toronto. — 
Early model schools; their defects. — Reforms of 1871. — Recent changes. 

The Provincial University: Two chief lines of progress. — The move- 
ment towards centralization. — University Federation movement, 1853- 
1901. — Principles underlying present federation. — Institutions outside of 
federation. — Conclusion, — endowments and appropriations represented by 
the University of Toronto as at present constituted. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



The period with which the following study mainly deals is 
not one arbitrarily selected. It possesses characteristics which 
distinguish it from the years which preceded it and those which 
followed. The year 1791, following close upon the first English 
settlement, marked the creation of the province of Upper Canada 
by the Constitutional Act, while in 1841 came into effect the 
Act of Union which again joined Upper to Lower Canada; 
but these provinces were again separated twenty-five years later 
by the Confederation Act which made the Dominion of the 
present day. 

The half-century from 1791 onward was one of marked 
growth in the population and material wealth of the Province, 
but, more important for the purpose of the present study, it 
witnessed also the development of certain religious, political and 
social ideals. It was a time of ferment and of struggle and 
it did not pass without the shedding of patriot blood, but through 
the dissension and the turmoil there were established three 
things which are the finest fruit of the thousand years or more 
of Anglo-Saxon civilization — responsible government, religious 
equality and the free school. Moreover, free public education 
was made possible only through the overthrow of autocracy in 
church and state ; hence no apology is needed for the frequent 
reference in the following pages to incidents which might seem 
at the first glance to be purely political or religious in their 
character. 

The debt of the writer to one predecessor in the field is mani- 
fest throughout. Dr. Hodgins in his Documentary History of 
Education in Upper Canada has compiled from an immense num- 
ber of sources, many of which are not readily available, a mass 
of information, the value of which to the student of educational 
conditions in Ontario can scarcely be overestimated. In a 
Documentary History, however, very little beyond a chrono- 
logical arrangement can be attempted and completeness must 
be secured even at the apparent sacrifice at times of relevancy. 



8 Introductory Note. 

The present study while in a measure chronological and 
descriptive, aims to be selective and interpretative as well. In 
its selective character it may be regarded as supplementing the 
work just referred to, while from the interpretative side it may 
furnish an element which seems to be lacking in such an other- 
wise excellent work as Dr. Ross's School System of Ontario. 
The supplementary chapter, it may be remarked, is added with 
a view to throwing some light on the chapters which precede 
it by furnishing to the reader a summary of educational events 
subsequent to 184 1. It must not be regarded as an attempt to re- 
count adequately the educational history of the Province from 
1841 till the present day. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Political and Social Background. 

The purpose of this chapter is not to attempt a complete 
resume of the poHtical and social life of Upper Canada during 
the period indicated ; such would be in itself an undertaking of 
greater magnitude than the entire present work professes to 
be. Its design is rather to call the attention of the reader to 
certain salient facts without a knowledge of which any clear 
understanding of the educational situation would be impossible. 

A brief sketch of the conditions which preceded the first 
extensive emigration to the territory known for many years 
as Upper Canada and now known as the Province of Ontario, 
forms a fitting preface to the story of the later period. 

During the period of French occupation, — the Ancien Regime, 
so-called, — there were several fortified posts, partly for military, 
partly for trading purposes, along the great stretch of waterway 
which now forms part of the boundary between Canada and 
the United States. Three of these were: Fort Cataraqui, near 
where the city of Kingston now stands; Fort Rouille, on the 
site of the present city of Toronto, and Fort Niagara, on the 
river of that name. Two of these posts — the first and the last- 
named — were continued when the English succeeded the French 
as masters of the soil, and thus naturally they became centres 
for the distribution of the settlers who came into Upper Canada 
in such large numbers in the years immediately following the 
war of the American Revolution. Previous to this time the 
French had made little attempt at colonization in Upper Canada. 
Naturally there had been a certain extension of settlement west- 
ward from Montreal, along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers. 
Then again a few of the French families who clustered about 
the trading post at Detroit had crossed the Detroit River and 
settled in what is now Canadian territory. Of these early 
settlers, the present French-speaking inhabitants of the County 
of Essex are, in the main, the descendants. This emigration 
was, however, so insignificant from a numerical standpoint, that 
it can safely be said that in 1783 (the date of the close of the 



10 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

Revolutionary War), the entire Province was practically un- 
touched by civilization. 

The nearness of this virgin territory coupled with the active 
encouragement given by the British Government resulted in the 
transplanting, in the years between 1784 and 1800, of large 
bodies of Loyalist settlers from the United States. The story 
of the persecutions which hastened this emigration does not 
properly belong to this narrative, and has, moreover, been told 
in detail by other writers. We are concerned here wholly with 
that part of the history of the settlement of Upper Canada which 
will help us to a better understanding of subsequent educational 
conditions in the Province. 

The Loyalists in question were of English, Dutch and Ger- 
man blood, and came almost wholly from New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, New Jersey and the New England States. They were 
able to bring very little money or moveable property with them ; 
hence, for some years, they were dependent to a considerable 
degree upon the bounty of the British Government. Liberal 
grants of land ranging, according to circumstances, from two 
hundred to two thousand acres were made to them ; free rations 
were dealt out, though at irregular intervals ; and seed grain 
and farm implements were distributed to assist them to become 
self-supporting as speedily as possible. All this mitigated, 
though it by no means wholly removed, the hardships of their 
lot. The chief Loyalist settlements were along the Upper St. 
Lawrence, on the Bay of Quinte (near the eastern end of Lake 
Ontario), in the Niagara peninsula and westward along the 
northeastern shore of Lake Erie. Because of the industry and 
thrift of their inhabitants, these districts soon came to rank 
among the most prosperous portions of the Province, Closely 
akin in character to these first settlers were the various bodies 
of Quakers, Dutch and Pennsylvania Germans, who came into 
Upper Canada during the first quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. In fact there was a marked emigration from the United 
States throughout the greater part of this period in spite of the 
fact that from 1812 till 181 5 Great Britain and the United 
States were at war. 

The European immigrants to Upper Canada were almost wholly 
from the British Isles. Indeed, the only continental element 



Political and Social Background. ii 

in the population of the Province during the fifty years of 
which we are speaking, if we exclude a band of Germans who 
emigrated to Markham Township in 1794 after a brief stay in 
New York State, seems to have been contributed by a few 
French RoyaHsts, Swiss and Alsatians.^ The vanguard from 
Great Britain were bands of Scotch Highlanders who settled 
in the County of Glengarry in the closing years of the eighteenth 
and the opening years of the nineteenth century. 

A noticeable feature of the disposal of the British emigrants 
was their settlement on large blocks of land consisting of a 
township or more. So clearly were the distinctions of race and 
religion marked by geographical position that even to-day one 
can find a township which is predominantly Highland Scotch, 
another which is almost wholly Lowland Scotch in character, 
others whose very names signify that the ancestors of many of 
the present inhabitants came, as the case may be, from the 
north of Ireland, from the south of Ireland, from Devonshire, 
Cornwall or from the German counties of Pennsylvania. In 
distinct contrast with the policy of settlement by townships, was 
that of Colonel Talbot the owner by Royal Grant of an im- 
mense tract of land in the western portion of the Province. He 
very wisely distributed his settlers after " the checkerboard fash- 
ion " so that no two families of the same nationality were placed 
side by side. The general policy of assigning land, to which 
we have just referred, joined with other factors which will 
presently be mentioned, tended to hinder any concerted action 
by the inhabitants of the Province in asserting their political 
rights and hence helped materially in continuing a governmental 
policy under which the rights of the average citizen, as regarded 
from a more modern view-point, received very scant considera- 
tion indeed. 

Another fact which is worthy of notice in this connection was 
the autocratic behavior of the administration in regard to the 
granting of land. Mr. Robert Thorpe, one of the Provincial 
judges in 1807, in referring to the " shop-keeper aristocracy " 
which surrounded the Lieutenant-Governor and influenced his 
official conduct, says : " Next to themselves, their families and 
friends, they give unbounded tracts of land in the finest situa- 

« See "Ethnographical Elements of Ontario" in Papers and Records of the Ont. Hist. 
Soe. , Vol. Ill, 1901. 



12 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

tions, at whatever rules or fees they choose and then barter this 
land to our greatest enemies in the States ; next they keep from 
the House of Assembly all accounts of the greatest part of the 
public money, thus denying them the first privilege given by 
the British Act of Parliament which established their Constitu- 
tion."^ Mr. Robert Gourlay, an intelligent and patriotic Scotch- 
man who came to Upper Canada in 1817, and who made a 
thorough investigation of the resources of the Province with a 
view to " a grand system of emigration," speaks of " the mean, 
selfish, unprincipled and unfeeling conduct of the Provincial 
Government in regard to the granting of land."^ British emi- 
grants, according to his statement, had to " dance attendance for 
weeks and months together before they could get a hearing 
from the Land Granting Department and when at last they 
were heard they were sent twenty or thirty miles into the 
wilderness where even native Americans could scarcely exist."' 
All this of course tended not only to retard the development of 
the Province, but also to increase greatly the popular bitterness 
against the powerful clique who thus sacrificed the general wel- 
fare to their own private convenience and emolument. 

If this were a history of the Province as a whole rather than 
an attempt to describe a particular phase of its political and 
social life, we might go on to speak here of various other arbi- 
trary acts of the Executive which further estranged the popular 
regard and which eventually led to an armed uprising (the 
Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837) on the part of a radical wing 
of the popular party. A few of these acts will be mentioned 
later in connection with certain specific phases of the general 
subject under consideration. For a statement of the remainder 
the reader is referred to any one of the Histories of Canada, 
mentioned in the bibliography at the close of this work. 

A brief explanation of the structure of the Provincial Govern- 
ment will here be in order. Canada was at the time a Crown 
Colony, that is, its more important affairs were administered by 
the British Government or by officials appointed by that govern- 
ment. The highest representative of the Crown was the Gov- 
ernor-General who resided at Quebec. The immediate execu- 

* Letter to Sir Georae Shee, Canadian Archives, Series 0. Vol. 305. p. 189, quoted in full 
in Report of Dom. Archivist {or 1891-93, note D. p. 57. 
M Statistical Account of Upper Canada, Vol. II, p. 418. 
*Ibid, p. 430. 



Political and Social Background. 13 

live authority in Upper Canada was in the hands of a Lieutenant- 
Governor whose headquarters were at the Provincial Capital, 
York (later Toronto). The immediate advisers of the Lieu- 
tenant-Governor were known as the Executive Council. They 
were appointed by him and most of them held important and 
lucrative positions under the Government. The legislative func- 
tions were in the hands of (i) a Legislative Council, also 
appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor, and from which the 
Executive Council was frequently recruited; (2) a House of 
Assembly, the members of which were chosen every few years 
by the qualified voters of the Province. 

It can be easily seen from the foregoing that the part actually 
taken by the people in the management of their affairs was a 
very modest one and indeed might practically be said to dis- 
appear under an Executive wedded to aristocratic ideals. That 
the Executive was at times of the character just mentioned is 
very clearly shown by the following statement of Lieutenant- 
Governor Sir Francis Gore in justification of the dismissal of 
Judge Robert Thorpe from the bench for political activity ob- 
noxious to the administration. " I cannot help entertaining the 
hope," remarks Sir Francis, " that the measure which has been 
adopted, however painful, will have the most salutary influence 
m preventing the further progress of that spirit of equality 
and want of subordination which too much prevails among the 
lower ranks of this Province."^ 

In fact throughout this whole period the House of Assembly, 
in so far as it kept itself free from the dictation of the Execu- 
tive, served two main purposes, neither of which was strictly 
legislative in character, (i) Through its investigations, reports 
and debates, it made the real needs of the Province apparent to 
the people at large and thus performed an educative function. 
(2) Through petitions which, from time to time, it laid at the 
foot of the Throne, it called the attention of the British Govern- 
ment to the crying abuses which existed in the Province and 
thus helped indirectly to check the autocratic tendencies of the 
Lieutenant-Governors and their advisers. Through these peti- 
tions also it helped to create, in the mother country, a senti- 
ment which made possible the establishment, in 1841, of the 

'Letter to Lord Castlereagh, in Canadian Archives, Series Q, Vol. 310, p. 15, quoted in 
Report of Dom. Archivist for 1892-93, note D, p. 87. 



14 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

principle that the members of the Executive and Legislative 
Councils should be men who possessed the confidence of the 
people as a whole. 

A brief statement of the municipal organization of the Prov- 
ince is also necessary. Before the creation of the Province of 
Upper Canada, by the Constitutional Act of 1791, that portion 
of Canada had been divided into four districts, viz. : Lunenburgh, 
Mecklenburgh, Nassau and Hesse. The first Parliament of 
Upper Canada, in 1792, re-named them the Eastern, Midland, 
Home and Western Districts. The Parliament of 1798 estab- 
lished eight districts which were subdivided into twenty-three 
counties, and these in turn into one hundred and fifty-eight 
townships.^ The names of these various districts will appear 
more than once in the following chapters, hence, they need not 
be given here. Throughout the whole of our period, the dis- 
trict and the township (with its included school districts) formed 
the units of school administration. At a later date the district 
was abandoned and its function, so far at least as the control 
of the schools was concerned, transferred to the county. 

The various religious denominations of the time naturally 
exerted a considerable influence on the educational history of 
the Province. Of these denominations, in their more general 
aspects we will now briefly speak, leaving for a subsequent 
chapter the consideration in detail of the relationship of cer- 
tain of them to the public schools. 

The facts, numerical and otherwise, in regard to the religious 
condition of the Province in 1792, are thus set forth in an 
official report made in that year to Lieutenant-Governor John 
Graves Simcoe. " Of this (the Anglican) Church " remarks 
the author of the report, " I am myself a member and am sorry 
to say that the state of it in this Province is not very flattering, 
A very small proportion of the inhabitants of Upper Canada 
have been educated in this persuasion and the emigrants to be 
expected from the United States will be for the most part Sec- 
taries or Dissenters and nothing prevents the teachers of this 
class from being proportionately numerous but the inability of 
the people at present to provide for their support. In the East- 
em District, the most populous part of the Province, there is 

' Gourlay, A Statistical Account of Upper Canada, Vol. I, pp. 1 16-120. 



Political and Social Background. 15 

no Church clergyman. They have a Presbyterian minister, 
formerly Chaplain to the 84th Regiment, who receives from the 
Government £50 p. ann. They have also a Lutheran minister 
who is supported by his congregation and the Roman Catholic 
priest settled at St. Regis occasionally officiates for the Scotch 
Highlanders settled in the lower part of the district who are 
very numerous and all Catholics. There are also many Dutch 
colonists in this part of the Province who have made several 
attempts to get a teacher of their own sect, but hitherto without 
success." 

" In the Midland District where the members of the Church 
are more numerous than in any other part of the Province, 
there are two Church clergymen who are allowed iioo stg. p. 
ann. each by the Government and £50 by the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel. There are also here some itinerant 
Methodist preachers the followers of whom are numerous and 
many of the inhabitants of the greatest property are Dutch 
colonists who have for some time past been using their endeavors 
to get a minister of their own sect among them. In the 
Home District there is one clergyman who has been settled 
here since the month of July last. The Scots Presbyterians 
who are pretty numerous here and to which sect the most 
respectable part of the inhabitants belong, have built a meeting- 
house and raised a subscription for a minister of their own who 
is shortly expected among them. There are here also many 
Methodists and Dutch Calvinists." 

" In the Western District there are no other clergymen than 
those of the Church of Rome. The Protestant inhabitants here 
are principally Presbyterians."^ 

The relative standing of the various denominations as regards 
numbers seems to have been practically the same some thirty 
years later, for in Mr. Gourlay's " Statistical Account," pub- 
lished in 1822, we find the following, — " In Upper Canada there 
are six ministers of the Church of England residing at Corn- 
wall, Kingston, Ernestown and Fredericksburg. They solem- 
nize marriages but there is no ecclesiastical court. Dissenters 
of all denominations are tolerated and protected by law. They 
are not subject to tithes or civil disabilities nor disqualified for 

Report of Richard Cartwricjht Jun'r, 1702, on "The Marriage Law in Upper Canada 
In Report of Dominion Archivist for 1891, Note I, pp. 85-86. 



1 6 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

office or a seat in the Legislature. Their contracts respecting 
the support of public worship are legally enforceable. Or- 
dained ministers of the Scotch, Lutheran and Calvinist churches 
upon producing satisfactory credentials in a Court of Sessions 
are authorized to perform marriages where one of the parties 
to be married is a member of their respective societies. Any 
denomination holding the distinguishing Calvinistic doctrines 
is included under the term Calvinist, as such, Presbyterian, 
Congregational and Baptist clergymen exercise the power of 
marriage. The dissenting denominations are Presbyterian, 
Lutheran, Methodists, Congregationalists, Moravians, Anabap- 
tists, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Menonists and Tunkers. Sev- 
eral of them are more numerous than the Episcopalians. The 
most numerous of all are the Methodists who are spread over 
the whole Province. Next in number are the Presbyterians 
who are of the Dutch Reformed church, the Church of Scot- 
land and Scotch seceders or the Associate Reformed Synod. 
The Presbyterians appear to be increasing in numbers and 
respectability." 

" The Roman Catholics, who are comparatively few, are 
attached to the government and grateful for the religious free- 
dom which they enjoy and by which they are distinguished 
from their brethren in Ireland." 

" Quakers, Menonists and Tunkers, being conscientiously 
scrupulous of bearing arms are conditionally exempt from mili- 
tary duties."^ 

Some ten years later (in 1831) the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir 
John Colborne, thus describes the " Ecclesiastical Establish- 
ments " of the Province in a letter to Lord Goderich, the secre- 
tary of state for the colonies : " There are thirty-seven mission- 
ary establishments (of the Church of England) under the direc- 
tion of the Bishop of Quebec assisted by two archdeacons. 
The Roman Catholic are under the control of Bishop 
Macdonnell who was last year appointed Bishop of Regiopolis 
(i. e., Kingston). The Presbyterians in communion with the 
Church of Scotland have about twenty ministers officiating in 
churches established in various parts of the Province. There 
are also about eighteen congregations unconnected with the 

' op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 233-234. 



Political and Social Background. 17 

Church of Scotland. . . . The Episcopal Methodists under 
the direction of the Canadian Conference have about sixty preach- 
ers and it is said about forty thousand communicants." 

" By returns received in April last, the population of the 
Province amounted to about 234,000 being an increase since 
1829 of 38,632."! 

Making all allowance for inaccuracies in the foregoing due 
to prejudice or misinformation, it is manifest that the dissenting 
denominations were greatly in the majority. In spite of this fact, 
however, the Reverend Doctor Strachan, the leader of the Angli- 
can church in the Province and its representative in the Legisla- 
tive and Executive Councils, resolutely and persistently claimed 
for that body all the privileges of the Establishment in England. 
This of course included the sole right of the Church to the enjoy- 
m.ent of the clergy reserves (an immense tract of land set apart 
by the Constitutional Act of 1791 for the support of " a Protes- 
tant clergy") and to the control of public education in all its 
departments. 

Naturally the so-called dissenters withstood these claims as 
imjust to themselves and to the important work which they 
were doing and as inconsistent with the spirit of the new coun- 
try. They united in opposing the claims of the Church of 
England to a monopoly of the clergy reserves, but differed 
among themselves as to the disposal which should be made of 
the lands in question. The Church of Scotland, for example, 
and a branch of the Methodists (the British Wesleyans) fav- 
ored a partition of these lands among the various Protestant 
denominations. The Canadian Methodists, on the contrary, 
through their official organ, the Christian Guardian, and its able 
editor, the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, strenuously advocated 
the devotion of the reserves to the support of public schools. 
Mr. Ryerson's position is thus stated in an editorial which 
appeared in the journal just mentioned, in 1838: "In respect 
to the ecclesiastical affairs of this province, I still adhere to the 
principles and views with which I set out in 1826. I believe 
the endowment of the priesthood of any church in this province 
will be an evil to that church, as well as impolitic in the gov- 

* Letter to Lord Goderich, in Canadian Archives, Series 0, Vol. 357-2, p. 282, quoted in 
Report of Dom. Archivist for 1899-1Q00, Note C, pp. 68-72. 



1 8 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

ernment. In accordance with the declaration put forth by 
several principal ministers in the Methodist Church in Janu- 
ary last, I believe that the appropriation of the proceeds of 
the clergy reserves to general educational purposes will be the 
most satisfactory disposal of them that can be made."^ 

Another cause for complaint and opposition was the special 
rights which the clergy of the Church of England enjoyed in 
regard to the solemnization of marriage. The " Calvinistic " 
clergy, as we have seen, might exercise this right under cer- 
tain restrictions. To the Methodist clergy as being Arminian 
rather than Calvinist, it was wholly denied. Not only was this 
felt to be a hardship by the Methodists; it was regarded as an 
indignity as well.^ 

All this will help us to appreciate the fact that religious and 
political questions became inextricably involved at times, since 
religious disabilities could be removed only through an agita- 
tion which was more or less political in its character. These 
semi-political, semi-religious controversies frequently had an 
educational bearing and thus served to complicate educational 
issues. To a discussion of this phase of the subject one or 
more chapters will later be devoted, hence we may now pass 
to a consideration of other topics. 

Of the general conditions of life during the period little 
perhaps need be said. They were such as pioneer communities 
invariably have to encounter. Traveling, except by water, was 
slow and difficult. Often settlers took up farms in " the bush " 
before roads were built. One of the regulations enforced by 
Colonel Talbot in the Talbot settlement was that each settler 
should make at least a quarter of a mile of public road. The 
Canada Land Company in the opening of " the Huron Tract " 
for settlement exercised still greater foresight. Roads and 
bridges were built and town sites planned before any settlers 
were introduced. Such cases as the two just mentioned were, 
however, decidedly exceptional. Another feature which greatly 
hindered proper means of communication and transportation was 
the existence of large blocks of unoccupied land, such as the 
clergy reserves, which interposed barriers of unbroken forest 

• Quoted in Biography of Ryerson by Nathaniel Burwash, p. 115. 

2 The disabilities here mentioned were removed bv the so-called Imperial Marriage Act 
of 1832. 



Political and Social Background. 19 

between various of the occupied portions of the Province. Of 
the stage-coaches of the time, Dr. Scadding in his Toronto 
of Old says : " We are informed by a contemporary advertise- 
ment now before us, that ' on the 20th of September next 
(1816), a stage will commence running between York and 
Niagara ; it will leave York every Monday and arrive at Niagara 
on Thursday ; and leave Queenstown every Friday. Baggage 
is to be considered at the risk of the owner and the fare to 
be paid in advance.' "^ Thus it will be seen that in 1816 it 
took four days to accomplish a journey which is now easily 
achieved by rail in as many hours. " In 1835," Dr. Scadding 
informs us, " Mr. William Weller was the proprietor of a line 
of stages between Toronto and Hamilton known as " The Tele- 
graph Line " and " Engaged to take passengers through by 
daylight (a distance of some forty miles) on the Lake Road, 
during the winter season."^ Of communication with the mother 
country in 1836, Mrs, Jameson, an authoress of the period, who 
resided in Toronto, has the following to say in her journal : 
" It is now seven weeks since the date of the last letters from 
my dear, far-distant home. . . . The archdeacon (Dr. 
Strachan) told me, by way of comfort, that when he came to 
settle in this country (in 1799), there was only one mail-post 
from England in the course of a whole year, and it was called, 
as if in mockery, the Express."^ 

Newspapers were few and, it would appear, short-lived as 
well. Mr. Lindsey in his Life of William Lyon Mackenzie, in 
discussing one of Mr. Mackenzie's newspaper- ventures (The 
Colonial Advocate, established at York in 1824), remarks: "It 
was doubtful whether any newspaper which had then been pub- 
lished in Upper Canada had repaid the proprietor the cost of 
its production. Any publisher who sent a thousand sheets 
through the post-office must pay $800 a year quarterly in 
advance."* Of post-office conditions in 1824, Mr. Lindsey 
informs us : " Though some of the other settlements were well 
supplied with post-offices, there were none at all on the south- 
western frontier from Chippewa by Fort Erie to the mouth of 
the Grand River. The three thousand settlers in Dumfries and 



1 op. cit., p. 49. 

^Toronto of Old, p. 49. 

3Vol. I, p. 182, quoted by Dr. Scadding in the work just mentioned. 

*0p. cit., Vol. I, p. 36. 



20 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

Waterloo had to travel from sixteen to forty miles before they 
reached a post-office. Postmasters received nothing for dis- 
tributing newspapers and so were careless about their delivery. 
Other modes of distribution were occasionally resorted to by 
publishers to avoid the heavy postal-tax."^ 

Having thus briefly reviewed the chief features of the early 
political and social life of the Province, we may now proceed 
to a study of certain movements and institutiona which, while 
the outcome of this wider life, were directly educational in 
character. We will consider first the various attempts made 
to provide for the support of public schools out of the public 
domain. 



1 The Life and Times of Williafn Lyon Mackenzie, Vol. I, p. 64. 



CHAPTER 11. 

The Land Grants for Schools. 

The first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada after the 
separation of that province from Lower Canada by the Consti- 
tutional Act of 1791, was Lieutenant-Colonel John Graves Sim- 
coe, an ex-officer of the British forces in the war of the Amer- 
ican Revolution and an ex-member of the British Parliament. 
As governor he actively encouraged the settlement of United 
Empire Loyalists in Upper Canada and sought in various other 
ways to promote the growth of the infant province. Being deeply 
chagrined at the success of the revolted colonies, he was naturally 
most anxious to develop in Upper Canada a sentiment of loyalty 
towards the political and religious institutions of the mother 
country. The means which, in his mind, would best conduce 
to this end were the appointment of an ecclesiastical official 
charged with the superintendence of the missionary enterprises 
of the Church of England in the Province, and the establish- 
ment of a provincial university. This university was to be — 
to use his own language — "A scion of the respectable stock of 
Oxford and Cambridge."^ 

The following extracts from letters written by Governor Sim- 
coe during his stay in Canada (1792-1796) will illustrate what 
has just been said and will give some further insight into the 
motives which actuated his official conduct. In a letter written 
in 1791 to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, 
he says, " In a literary way I should be glad to lay the foun- 
dation stone of some society that I trust might hereafter con- 
duce to the extension of science. Schools have been shamefully 
neglected — a college of a higher class would be eminently useful, 
and would give a tone of principle and manners that would 
be of infinite support to government."^ He returns to the same 
theme in a letter written in the following year to the Right 
Honorable Henry Dundas, Secretary of State. " But the ques- 
tion of higher education is of still more importance; (i. e. than 

1 From a letter to the first Church of England Bishop of Quebec, quoted in Doc. Hist., 
Vol. I, p. IV 

^Doc. Hisl., Vol. I, p. II. 



22 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

certain other matters to which he had just referred) lower edu- 
cation, being less expensive, may in the meantime, be provided 
by relations, and more remotely by school lands. The higher 
must be indebted to the liberality of the British Government, 
as, owing to the cheapness of education in the United States, 
the gentlemen of Upper Canada will send their children there, 
which would tend to pervert their British principles."^ 

The enthusiasm of Governor Simcoe for higher education did 
not meet, however, with a very sympathetic response from the 
officials of the Home Government. Secretary Dundas, in a 
reply to the letter from which we have just quoted, says, "As 
to schools and a university, I think that the schools will be 
sufficient for some time."^ Much more outspoken still in his 
lack of sympathy is the Duke of Portland, Secretary of State, 
who remarks in a letter dated June 22, 1796: "As the want 
of schoolmasters is particularly noticed in your letter to the 
bishop, I should be far from unwilling to recommend that some 
provision should be made here for their maintenance; but in 
doing this I must observe that my ideas of schoolmasters best 
suited to the present state of Upper Canada are such as are 
thoroughly competent to teach reading, writing, accounts and 
mensuration."^ 

The apathy of the Home Government did not, however, pre- 
vent Governor Simcoe from making an earnest effort to secure 
an appropriation from the public domain for the needs of a 
university when that institution should be established. Witness 
the following paragraph from a letter written to the Duke of 
Portland a few days after the receipt of the communication 
from which we have just quoted. " In the meantime the sevenths 
of the Crown will become gradually productive as lands which 
have been granted shall be cultivated, or withdrawn from the 
market, and appropriations may be made agreeably to the 
opinion of the Council, to be sold hereafter for public purposes, 
the first and chief of which I beg to offer with all respect and 
deference, to your grace, must be the erection and endowment 
of a university from which more than any other source or 
circumstance whatever, a grateful attachment to His Majesty, 

Woe. Hist., Vo\. I, p. II. 

■'Ibid. 

^Ibid, p. 14. 



Land Grants for Schools. 23 

morality and religion will be fostered and take root throughout 
the whole Province." 

The Reverend Doctor Ryerson, in his History of the United 
Empire Loyalists, refers to Governor Simcoe as " the father 
of constitutional, pure and progressive government in Upper 
Canada."^ However true this statement may be as applied 
to other phases of his activity, the term " progressive " can 
apply only with serious limitations to his educational policy. 
His ideal in this regard was a reproduction, in their essential 
characteristics, of the English public schools and universities. 
Elementary education was to him, as to most Englishmen of 
his day, a matter for charity or private enterprise. He failed 
to apprehend the fact that among the settlers of this new coun- 
try there existed a popular attitude which would in the next 
quarter century become increasingly hostile to aristocratic ideals 
in education and to sectarian domination in the public schools. 
Statesmanlike he was, however, in his emphasis on the desir- 
ability of early setting apart a portion of the public land for 
educational purposes, though he failed to foresee that public 
endowment would eventually lead to public control and to a 
democratic and a non-denominational, if not a purely secular, 
system of schools. 

Governor Simcoe ^yas recalled in 1796 but his appeals had 
evidently produced some effect since in the following year (1797) 
the acting-governor — the Honorable Peter Russell — received 
from the Duke of Portland a communication announcing on 
behalf of the King " His (Majesty's) most gracious intention 
to comply with the legislature of his Province of Upper Canada 
in such manner as shall be judged most effectual, first, by the 
establishment of free grammar schools in those districts in which 
they are called for, and in the process of time by establishing 
other seminaries of a larger and more comprehensive nature for 
the promotion of religious and moral learning, and the study 
of the arts and sciences. With this view the President is 
directed to consult the members of His Majesty's Executive 
Council, and the Judges and Law Officers of the Crown in 
Upper Canada, and to report to the Secretary of State in which 
manner, and to what extent, a portion of the Crown Lands 

^ History of the U. E. Loyalists, p. 312. 



24 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

may be appropriated and rendered productive towards the forma- 
tion of a fund for the above purpose."^ The committee was 
appointed as directed and its report submitted in the following 
year. This report is too lengthy to be given in detail, but five 
of its recommendations are of sufficient importance to be 
quoted here: 

(i) That an appropriation of 500,000 acres . . will form a suffi- 

cient fund for the establishment and maintenance of the royal foundation 
of four grammar schools and an university in the Province of Upper 
Canada. 

(2) That the present circumstances of the Province call for the erection 
of two of these schools, one at the town of Kingston and the other at the 
town of Newark (Niagara). 

(3) That for the purpose of building a plain but solid and substantial 
house, containing a school room sufficient to contain one hundred boys, 
and apartments for the master large enough for the accommodation of a 
moderate family and the reception of from ten to twelve boys as boarders, 
the sum of £3000 provincial currency for each will be a sufficient allowance. 

(4) That for the purpose of raising that sum a portion of the appro- 
priated tract be sold in the manner directed by His Grace the Duke of 
Portland with respect to the other waste lands of the Crown. 

(5) That for the purpose of defraying the salaries of a master and 
undermaster, in case an undermaster should be thought necessary, and 
also for the purpose of keeping the buildings in repair and making such 
additions thereto as circumstances shall require, the annual sum of £180 
provisional currency for each school is a sufficient allowance.^ 

In spite of the fact, which is abundantly proven in the fore- 
going quotations, that in the correspondence and deliberations 
concerning the Royal Grant of 1797, grammar schools were 
regarded as having the prior claim, the university or, as it was 
called, King's College, was made, throughout the whole period 
with which we have to deal, the chief, and in fact almost the 
sole beneficiary. 

This circumstance can, to a great extent, be attributed to 
the influence of one man — the Reverend John Strachan. This 
gentleman came to Upper Canada from Scotland in 1799 with 
the expectation of becoming the head of the projected university. 
Since there was no immediate prospect of the university being 
established, he accepted a position as tutor in the family of the 
Honorable Richard Cartwright of Kingston. Subsequently he 

^ Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 18. 
2 Ibid Vol. I, p. 23. 



Land Grants for Schools. 25 

became clergyman of the Church of England, master of the 
grammar school at Cornwall and master of the Home District 
grammar school at York. He came to occupy at a later period 
many important offices. In the Church, he was made archdeacon 
of York and eventually bishop of Toronto. In the field of 
education, he was head of the General Board of Education 
during the ten years of its existence (1823-1833) and President 
of King's College from its inception till 1849. I" that year 
he resigned the presidency because of the secularization of the 
college through a radical change in the nature of its charter, 
and devoted his energies to the building up of a rival institu- 
tion under the auspices of the Church of England and known 
as Trinity College. As a member of the Legislative Council 
for many years and also of the Executive Council of the Lieu- 
tenant-Governor, he exerted great political influence. He was 
naturally from the first a zealous champion of the cause of the 
university and had much to do with the keeping of the needs 
of higher education prominently before the Legislature and 
the people. His official position, united with a strong person- 
ality, a broad scholarship and a high personal character made 
him a commanding figure in the educational life of the province 
for nearly half a century. 

It will be in order now to review briefly the various appro- 
priations of land for educational purposes made during the 
fifty years subsequent to 1797. 

The undesirability of an immediate sale of the half million 
or more of acres at the disposal of the Provincial Government 
for school purposes is illustrated by the fact, that 81,000 acres 
of land, sold in 1800 to defray the expense of building a public 
road, realized only £411, i6s. and the further fact that when 
the executive desired to secure a house and four acres of land 
at Niagara to be used for grammar school purposes, the owner 
of the property asked in exchange 73,000 acres of public land. 
The chief reason for the failure of the negotiations seems to 
have been not any belief on the part of the prospective pur- 
chasers that the owner's terms were exorbitant but the dis- 
covery that the house in question was within easy range of 
the guns of the American fort across the river. 



26 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

Apart from the foregoing, no formal action looking to the 
disposal of any portion of the land grant for schools seems 
to have been taken before 1819. In that year, the Executive 
Council urged the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, 
to secure " a formal sanction under the Royal Sign Manual or 
the signature of His Majesty's principal Secretary of State for 
the Colonies, to sell, lease, grant and dispose of the said 500,000 
acres of land, for the purpose of establishing a university in 
this province." A sufficient reason for excluding the grammar 
schools from participation in this grant existed, in their opinion, 
in the fact " that provision for district schools is not now 
required out of this fund, being (already) made by the Legis- 
lature (by the Act of 1807)."' 

This recommendation was never carried out, though, some 
ten years later, an endowment almost equal in value to that sug- 
gested by the Executive Council was assigned to the university. 
"According to the Deed of Endowment of the 3rd of January 
1828, the quantity of land conveyed to the university from the 
Crown Reserves was 225,944 acres. . . . The Crown 
Reserves thus converted into University Endowment consisted 
of lands situate in various parts of Upper Canada in actual or 
nominal occupation, under lease, at rate of rental fixed by a 
certain scale established by the Provincial Government, and a 
large proportion of the lots were in an improved or cultivated 
state."- This involved a resumption on the part of the Crown 
of an equal amount of land from the original grant. The reason 
for this exchange is given in some detail by Dr. Strachan in 
his address at the opening of King's College in 1842. " From 
the first settlement of the Province, two-sevenths of the land 
in the settled Townships had been reserved — one for the main- 
tenance of the Protestant Clergy, called Clergy Reserves — the 
other still remained for special purposes at the disposal of the 
Government, and were called Crown Reserves. These latter being 
still in the Crown, had become in many places very valuable, 
from the settlements around them, and if brought into the 
market would command reasonable prices much more than the 
lands which had been originally appropriated for the district 

1 Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 151. 

' From Report of Commissioners appointed by Lord Eljrin, Governor-General, in 1848 
to enquire into the affairs of King's College, pp. 16 and 17, quoted in Doc. Hist., Vol. 1, 
p. aos. 



Land Grants for Schools. 27 

(grammar) schools and university, which had been carelessly 
selected and continued, from their remoteness, almost unsale- 
able. Now, to secure a complete endowment for a university 
it was submitted by Sir Peregrine Maitland to His Majesty's 
Government to exchange a portion of the school lands for a 
like quantity of the Crown Reserves. For the mere purpose 
of granting lots to settlers, the school lands were as useful 
to the Government as the Crown Reserves ; but such an exchange, 
if it could be effected, would place at His Excellency's disposal 
an endowment which might be made almost immediately avail- 
able."^ 

Under the much more favorable conditions thus brought about 
the financial standing of the university steadily improved, so that 
in January, 1839, it was estimated that up to that date there 
had been sold 93,737^ acres at an aggregate price of ^55,224, 
14s., 7d. In addition to the revenue derived from the invest- 
ment of this sum, the income from leased lands must be taken 
into consideration. In February, 1842, this was stated as being 
£1862 per annum, with arrears of rent amounting to £15,515, 
5s., 9d., of which £10,000 might be recovered in six years. ^ 
Thus, when, in 1842, the university began its work as a teach- 
ing body, it had available sources of income which, for that 
time, were quite considerable. 

Closely connected with the grants and expenditures for uni- 
versity purposes was the attempted endowment in 1820, from 
university funds, of a " National " system of schools patterned 
after the system of the same name in England, and the assign- 
ment of 66,000 acres of the school lands to Upper Canada 
College, " the superior grammar school " founded in 1829 by 
Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Colborne. Since both of these 
institutions will be treated at some length in subsequent chap- 
ters, no further reference to them is here necessary. 

In marked contrast with the attitude of the Executive Council 
of 1819, a select committee of the House of Assembly on Edu- 
cation advocated, in 183 1, the use of the land grant chiefly, if 
not solely, for grammar and common school purposes. After 
reviewing briefly the educational proceedings of 1797, 1798 and 



' Pp. 36-38 of address. Quoted in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 204. 

* From a statement of the finances of King's College appended to the Journals of the 
House of Assembly for 1839. Quoted in Doc. Hist., Vol. Ill, p. 182. 



28 Public Educatioti in Upper Canada. 

1819, the committee express the opinion that the " original 
intention of the Legislature of 1797 has been lost sight of and 
for no other reason that your committee can discover than that 
a grammar school has by Act of the Legislature (in 1807) 
been already established in each district with a salary of iioo 
to the master."^ 

The recommendations of the committee with the data there- 
for are summed up in the following paragraph : 

The whole reservation of 549,217 acres if sold at the average price of 
ten shillings ($2) per acre would give a capital of £274,608, producing, if 
invested at the rate of 5 per cent, interest, an annual income of £13,730 
a sum sufficient to endow the schools (as detailed in the following table) 
which your Committee conceive to be necessary besides leaving an impor- 
tant balance to defray the expense of the sales and the collecting of the 
money. 

II (Free) grammar schools at £400 each is £4,400 

I College at York 2,000 

132 Township (Common) Schools being 12 in 

each District at £50 6,600 

Balance to defray the expense of sales, etc 730 

£13,700 : $54,9202 

The allusion to a " College at York " instead of a formal 
mention of King's College, for which a royal charter had been 
obtained four years previously, is significant as reflecting the 
hostile attitude of the House towards that institution on account 
of the sectarian character of the charter in question. In fact 
the House had, in 1829. gone so far as to pass a bill enlarging 
Upper Canada College into an undenominational university, 
hoping thereby to make the establishment of King's College 
unnecessary. Of course the real purport of the bill was easily 
detected by the Legislative Council who, accordingly, promptly 
rejected it. 

There is little doubt that the House in its attacks on the 
management of the school lands and in its estimate of the 
immediate value of those lands, did not fully appreciate the 
practical difficulties of the situation. This fact is clearly 
shown in a report made in this same year to the Lieutenant- 
Governor by the Executive Council on the question of the 

^Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 22. 
* Ibid, pp. 22-23. 



Land Grants for Schools. 29 

endowment of the grammar schools with land. After making 
certain recommendations pointing to the gradual realization of 
a money endowment for the purpose mentioned, the report goes 
on to state: 

Before closing this report, the Executive Council think it proper to 
advert to the assertion frequently brought forward, that the School Reser- 
vation might have been made long ago far more productive and yielding 
by this time a large disposal fund. 

That so long as millions of acres were in course of grant (which was 
the case till 1828) by the Crown in fee simple, for almost nothing, and 
more than half the population were entitled, from various causes, to 
gratuitous grants, no lands could have been sold for any price near their 
value. 

Any objection, therefore, on this head is evidently founded in error; 
and calculations founded upon the receipt of large sums of money from 
sales which could never have been effected, can only be brought forward 
by those who have not fully understood the subject* 

Though all the parties concerned had by this time come to 
realize the justice of the claims of the grammar schools to a 
participation in the school lands, nothing in the way of positive 
legislation was accomplished till 1839 when by an Act of that 
year, 250,000 acres were definitely set apart for grammar school 
purposes. That this source of revenue was promptly utilized 
is proven by the fact that by the beginning of 1841 the amount 
invested in Provincial debentures on behalf of the grammar 
schools by the Council of King's College (the custodian of 
the fund) was nearly fifteen thousand pounds.^ 

When we turn to the common schools, we find that their 
claim to a share in the public domain was even more tardily 
acknowledged. As early as 1816 the House of Assembly and 
the Legislative Council united in an address to the Lieutenant- 
Governor asking for an appropriation of a part of the waste 
lands of the Crown for common school purposes. Though the 
Lieutenant-Governor in response assured the two houses of 
his sympathy with the movement, no further action seems to 
have been taken at that time. In December, 183 1, there was 
presented to the House of Assembly a petition from certain 
inhabitants of the county of Oxford " praying that the House 
will address His Majesty praying him to authorize the Parlia- 



» Doc. Hist.. Vol. II, p. 46. 

' From Financial statement of the Bursar of King's College submitted at a meeting of the 
College Council, June 30th, 1841. In Doc. Hist., Vol. IV, p. 62. 



30 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

ment of this Province to appropriate — acres of the waste lands 
of the Crown to constitute a fund for the support of common 
schools."^ 

The committee to whom this address was referred recom- 
mended a grant, for the purpose mentioned, of one milHon acres. 
In addition they submitted a carefully wrought scheme whereby, 
in their opinion, a common school fund might be immediately 
created. This scheme involved, among other things, the use 
of the Provincial credit in the floating of a loan, this loan to 
be gradually repaid as the school lands came into the market. 
Nothing definite, however, came of this report, so a similar com- 
mittee in the following year made a like recommendation. The 
reasons for their action are expressed with considerable force 
and concreteness. " Your committee," they declare, " feel it to 
be their duty, most earnestly and anxiously to draw the attention 
of your Honourable House to the astounding fact, that less is 
granted by the Provincial Legislature for educating the youth 
of three hundred thousand people than is required to defray the 
contingent expenses of one session of Parliament." 

" How, indeed," they ask, " can useful improvements be pro- 
moted — the resources of the Province developed — its iwealth 
increased — or its character elevated, if we continue to keep back 
the blessings of knowledge, and neglect to foster sound learning 
and scientific attainment?"^ 

The slowness of the Province in this regard is illustrated both 
in this report and the one of the preceding year by references 
to the endowment of common schools in various states of the 
Union — in New York State in particular. 

The Select Committee of the House on Education in 1833 
repeated the recommendations of its two immediate predecessors 
besides urging a material increase of the annual grant from 
the Provincial treasury for common school purposes. In the 
Speech from the Throne at the opening of the Parliamentary 
Session of 1835, the Lieutenant-Governor recommended " that 
township schools should be immediately organized and some 
practical mode decided on for applying the funds which should 
accrue from the sale of school lands not alienated by His 
Majesty's Government, and which had been placed under the 

» Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 49. 

'Text of GDmmittee's Report in Doc. Hist., Vol. II, pp. 106-110. 



Land Grants for Schools. 31 

control of the Legislature, at the request of the House of 
Assembly, by the King."^ This recommendation was, however, 
as barren of practical result as were those of the three com- 
mittees of which mention has just been made. In the legislative 
session of 1839, ^ t>ill " to appropriate one million of acres 
of waste lands for the support of common schools in Upper 
Canada " was agreed upon by a joint committee of the House 
of Assembly and the Legislative Council and passed by the 
former body. Although not formally rejected by the Council, 
it was dropped in committee and so failed to become law. 

It is very greatly to be regretted that through this action 
(or rather inaction) of the Legislative Council, a measure of 
so vital moment to the future welfare of the Province should 
have thus barely failed of success. Definite legislative action 
in the matter was thereby delayed for ten years. Moreover the 
land endowment eventually granted to the common schools of 
the Province was in consequence only one-half of what it might 
otherwise have been, since the grant of 1849 was made by the 
legislature of the united provinces and the million acres, at that 
time appropriated, divided equally between Upper and Lower 
Canada. 

In thus reviewing the history of the land grant of 1797 and 
of the whole movement in Upper Canada for ' the endowment 
of public education from the public domain, one is strongly 
impressed with the influence exerted by the policy which 
was formulated by Governor Simcoe at the inception of the 
movement. The university, as has been shown, was given the 
first place, the grammar schools came second and the common 
schools last. That this attitude was opposed by a strong party 
in the House of Assembly and by a majority of the settlers 
of the province is doubtless true but popular sentiment could 
avail little against aristocratic prejudice entrenched behind an 
executive predisposed towards the conceptions of education then 
prevalent in the mother country, and inclined to look upon the 
movement for popular and non-denominational schools as an 
innovation tinged with disloyalty. 

That this ultra-conservative attitude presented elements of 
incongruity even to visiting Englishmen, is illustrated by the 



^ Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 161. 



32 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

following extracts from Three Years' Residence in Canada by 
Mr. T. R. Preston, an English gentleman who spent the years 
1837, 1838, and 1839 ^^ the colony, and who, on his return to 
England, published the results of his observations. After review- 
ing in some detail educational proceedings from 1797 onward 
he says of the principle of a land endowment for public schools : 
" The method of its development (in Upper Canada) was replete 
with fallacy and injustice ; attempting as it did to invert the 
legitimate order of a common inheritance. Though unques- 
tionably an object most desirable per se, the establishment if 
it were possible of an institution in Upper Canada, conferring 
only on the few the higher grades of literary and scientific learn- 
ing would be a strange burlesque, so long as elementary instruc- 
tion remained in arrear of the general want."^ 

It must not be forgotten, moreover, that the bitter political 
struggles of the day introduced serious complications. They 
led to animosities of a personal character between members of 
the two branches of the Legislature and between members and 
factions of the House of Assembly itself. All this inevitably 
worked hardship to the cause of educational reform. When 
eventually, by the Act of Union of 1841 and by the proceedings 
which accompanied it, the principle of " responsible govern- 
ment " was established and the two legislative bodies brought 
more into harmony with each other, reforms which had been 
urged in vain for over thirty years were speedily brought to 
pass, and in less than ten years' time an orderly and compre- 
hensive system of common schools was created out of the chaos 
which had theretofore existed. 



1 Three Years' Residence in Canada, Vol. II, p. 109. 



CHAPTER III. 

The District Grammar School — Legislative and Adminis- 
trative Aspects. 

Although in the proceedings, legislative and otherwise, which 
attended the Royal Land Grant of 1797, definite reference was 
made to use of this grant for the founding and maintenance of 
public grammar schools, Httle was really done in this connec- 
tion for over forty years. During the meantime, such grammar 
schools as were established, were, with one exception, sup- 
ported wholly out of the Provincial treasury. The reasons for 
this delay and the political dissensions which arose because of 
it have already been referred to. 

A brief review of the Educational Proceedings in the Prov- 
incial Legislature prior to 1807 may throw some light upon edu- 
cational conditions during the period, and will serve incidentally 
to illustrate the inertia which all important reforms invariably 
have to overcome. 

In 1804, a petition^ was presented to the Lieutenant-Governor 
and Legislature from the County of Glengarry, mentioning that 
the Highlanders who formed practically the total population 
of the county were extremely backward in promoting education, 
for two chief reasons : First, that they used the Gaelic language 
in ordinary intercourse and in their religious services and 
hence thought an English education unnecessary and, second, 
that in the mother country they were used to charity schools 
and were consequently unwilling to go to any personal expense 
in the matter of educating their children. The petition stated 
further that, because of these facts, the schools existing in the 
county were " fluctuating and of little value " and asked on 
political and moral grounds for the erection of schools on 
Provincial authority and at Provincial expense. 

On the same day that this petition was read in the House 
of Assembly, a bill was introduced asking for the establishment 
of district schools out of any funds remaining unappropriated 
in the Provincial treasury. This bill was lost by the deciding 

"■ Copy of Petition in Doc. Hist., VoL I, pp. 47, 48. 



34 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

vote of the speaker. Later in the session, the member who 
had been responsible for the measure obtained leave from the 
House to bring in a bill for the establishment of a school fund. 
Three days later he was allowed to substitute an address on 
the subject in place of his projected bill. Almost immediately 
thereafter he left for his home, so that even the address failed 
to find its way before the House. 

In 1805, the member in question — a Mr. Ebenezer Washburn — 
re-introduced his bill for establishing district schools. The 
House, however, proceeded no further in the matter than the 
holding of two meetings to consider the measure in committee 
of the whole. A bill for the purchase of " Philosophical Ap- 
paratus " met a somewhat similar fate, being dropped at the 
end of its second reading. It would appear from the records 
of their deliberations, that the Legislative Council during these 
two years was even less interested in educational legislation 
than was the House, nothing of the kind having been attempted 
by them. 

The legislative session of 1806 witnessed a decided step in 
advance in the matter of education. At an early period in the 
session, the House in Committee of the Whole passed a reso- 
lution to the effect that " Seminaries for the education of the 
youth are highly necessary in this Province."^ The bill for 
the purchase of " Philosophical Apparatus " being re-introduced, 
passed both branches of the Legislature and was assented to by 
the Lieutenant-Governor. This bill, as enacted, set apart £400 
for the purpose mentioned and provided that " the said instru- 
ments " should be deposited " in the hands of some person 
employed in the education of youth in this Province, in order 
that they may be as useful as the state of the Province will 
permit."- Some idea of this apparatus and the work which it 
accomplished is given in the following quotation from a local 
historian who, writing many years later, said, " From the debris 
of which collection preserved in one of the rooms of the Home 
District School building, we ourselves, like others, probably, 
of our contemporaries, obtained our very earliest inkling of the 
existence and significance of scientific apparatus."^ 

^ Doc. Hist., Vol. I. p. 52. 

246th Georije III, Chap. Ill, "An act to procure certain apparatus, etc.," Doc. Htst., 
Vol. I, p. ■;6. 

3 Dr. ScaddinK in "Toronto of Old," quoted in Doc. Htst., Vol. I, p. 55. 



Graiiniiar ScJiool — Legislative and Administrative Aspects. 35 

As to grammar school legislation, nothing was achieved in 
this year. A bill entitled "An act for the more general dis- 
semination of learning throughout this Province " while it passed 
the House, failed to secure the endorsement of the Council. A 
similar bill, however, became law in the following year, under 
the title "An act to establish public schools in each and every 
district of this Province." Because of the importance of this 
measure it will be necessary to give it a somewhat detailed 
consideration. 

By the Act of 1807^ the Province was divided for school 
purposes into eight districts, as against four as recommended 
by the special committee which dealt with the matter in 1798 
and whose report is referred to in a preceding chapter. These 
eight districts were as follows : The Western District with a 
school at Sandwich, the London District with a school to be 
situated in the Township of Townshend, the Niagara District 
with a school at Niagara, the Home District with a school at 
York (now Toronto), the Alidland District with a school at 
Kingston, the Johnstown District with a school in the township 
of Augusta and the Eastern District v»'ith a school at Cornwall. 
The reader who is acquainted with the geography of Ontario will 
see that these districts extended along the southern border of 
the Province from the Detroit river on the west almost to the 
Ottawa river on the east. Thus each district embraced an area 
which is now occupied by several counties. 

The salary of the master of each school was fixed by the 
Act at iioo yearly payable out of the Provincial treasury upon 
an order of the Lieutenant-Governor upon the Receiver-General. 
To the Lieutenant-Governor was assigned also the duty of 
appointing not less than five trustees for each district and of 
ratifying or rejecting the teachers which these trustees might 
select for their respective districts. The trustees as represent- 
ing, in a sense, the local community, were vested with the right 
of examining and appointing teachers, subject, as mentioned 
above, to the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor. They were 
also given the power of removing at their discretion any teacher 
" for any misdemeanor or impropriety of conduct," and of nomi- 
nating a successor. In addition, they were authorized to make 

1 47 Geome III, Chap. VI, "An act to establish Public Schools in each and every Dis- 
trict of this Province." Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 70. 



36 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

" such rules and regulations for the good government and 
management of the said public schools with respect to the teacher, 
for the time being, and to the scholars, as in their discretion 
shall seem meet." 

Although it is not expressly stated in the Act, it is to be 
presumed that the trustees were held responsible for the pro- 
vision of the necessary school buildings and equipment. In fact 
these already existed in the case of three of the schools — those 
at Cornwall, Kingston and York, In one case at least — that 
of the District of London — there is a record of a popular sub- 
scription being taken up for the building of a school house. ^ 
The schools in question were not free in the present sense of 
the term as applied to education. Tuition fees were charged 
which went to swell the salary of the master, who was also, in 
some cases at least, allowed to further supplement his income 
by taking scholars as boarders. The Act was to be in force for 
four years from the date of its passing but in the following 
year this restriction Avas removed and it became a permanent 
piece of legislation. 

It would appear that there was little delay in giving efi'ect 
to the provisions of the Act, since the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir 
Francis Gore, in his Speech from the Throne at the opening 
of Parliament in 1808, was able to make the following announce- 
ment : " Since the last session of this Legislature, the necessary 
means have been taken on my part, and on that of the trustees 
appointed by me, for the establishing of public schools, institu- 
tions which I trust, will be the means not only of communi- 
cating useful knowledge to the youth of this Province, but also 
of instilling into their minds principles of religion and lovaltv.''- 
The House of Assembly expressed itself in its reply as follows : 
" We highly applaud the prompt and efficacious measures 
adopted by Your Excellency and we pleasingly anticipate from 
these institutions the most substantial benefits to the rising gen- 
eration in this Province."^ 

The satisfied state of mind reflected in these Avords was not, 
however, to continue very long. During this very session, three 
members of the House left their seats and departed for their 

1 Vide Petition to the House of Assembly from certain inhabitants of the London District 
in Doc. Hist.. Vol. I, p. 71. 

2 Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 62. 

3 Doc. Hist.. Vol. I, p. 62. 



Grammar School — Legislative and Administrative Aspects, ^y 

homes in order (ineffectually, as it turned out) to prevent the 
assembling of a quorum and the consequent passing of the bill 
which removed the four years' restriction from the act of the 
preceding year. Local disapproval of a policy which concen- 
trated the government patronage upon a single school in a dis- 
trict was shown by the presentation to both branches of the 
Legislature, of a numerously signed petition from the London 
District asking that the legislative grant to that district be 
divided among four schools instead of being used for the sup- 
port of a single one. 

The spirit which prompted this petition re-asserted itself in 
two petitions presented at the legislative session of 1812, one 
from the Newcastle and one from the Midland District. The 
two were similar in tone but the latter was the more explicit 
in its statement of grievances. 

By reason of the place of instruction being established at one end of 
the District and the sum demanded for tuition, in addition to the annual 
contribution received from the public, most of the people are unable to 
avail themselves of the advantages contemplated by the institution. A few 
wealthy inhabitants and those of the town of Kingston reap exclusively 
the benefit of it in this District. The institution, instead of aiding the 
middling and poorer classes of His Majesty's subjects, casts money into 
the lap of the rich, who are sufficiently able, without public assistance, 
to support a school in every respect equal to the one established by law. 
Your Petitioners . . . cannot be persuaded that you will continue 
in force an Act proved by a fair experiment to be so partial in its opera- 
tion, and so little calculated to effect the contemplated objects. 

Thus spoke the voice of Democracy. The aristocratic attitude 
in regard to public education found expression in a counter- 
petition from the Eastern District addressed to the Lieutenant- 
Governor in person : " We have seen provision made for giving 
the youth of this Province such a liberal education, as may 
not only qualify them for the learned professions, but also estab- 
lish firmly in their minds the purest morals and religious prin- 
ciples, which shall enable them to give the most salutary direction 
to the general manners of the Province, and revive that ardent 
patriotism, for which their fathers have been so honorably dis- 
tinguished."^ 

Although by the Common Schools Act of 1816, a rather liberal 
provision was made for the endowment of elementary education, 

* Copies of the three petitions referred to are given in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 76, 77. 



o 



8 Public Ed u cat ion in Upper Canada. 



the attention of the popular branch of the Legislature was not 
to be diverted thereby from the question of grammar school 
reform. 

During the session of 1817, a bill " to repeal part of and to 
amend the laws now in force for establishing district schools, 
etc.," passed the House of Assembly. It was amended by the 
Legislative Council and returned for the further consideration 
of the House. The sudden proroguing of Parliament by the 
Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Francis Gore, prevented any definite 
action of the House on the amended bill. 

In the following year (1818) a grammar school amendment 
bill was again introduced in the House. It was subsequently 
dropped to make room for a grammar school repeal bill. This 
latter bill went no further than a first reading and so the 
amendment bill was brought forward once more and passed, 
under the title "An act to repeal part of and amend the laws 
now in force for establishing district grammar schools in the 
districts of this Province and further to amend the provisions 
of the same." This bill was amended by the Council, accepted 
in its amended form by the House and to become law lacked 
only the assent of the interim Lieutenant-Governor, the Hon- 
orable Samuel Smith. This gentleman, however, possibly be- 
cause of the temporary character of his office, withheld that 
assent until he had obtained " the signification of His Majesty's 
pleasure in Council thereon."^ This action prevented the enact- 
ment of the bill into law since no effort was apparently made 
to consult the Royal Will in the matter, possibly because of the 
appointment a few months thereafter of a new Lieutenant- 
Governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland. 

On account of the impoverished state of the Provincial treas- 
ury, the new Executive found it necessary to call an extra session 
of the Legislature. At this session, although matters of finance 
were naturally uppermost, sufficient attention was paid to edu- 
cation to result in the passing by the House of a Grammar 
School Amendment bill identical in title with that of the previous 
session. A conference between committees of the two houses, 
in regard to possible amendments, was in progress when the 
Lieutenant-Governor, having secured the necessary grants, dis- 
solved Parliament. 



' Minutes of House for ist April, 1818, in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. n8. 



Gnvnimar Scliool — Lcgislafiz'c and Administrative Aspects. 



39 



The exact nature of these various bills and amendments can- 
not be determined. Some inkling of their character, may, 
however, be obtained from a study of the Grammar School 
Amendment Act of 1819. The Act in question is significant 
not so much for any important reforms v^^hich it inaugurated 
as for the important tendencies which it illustrates. We will 
proceed to a brief analysis of this measure. 

The germ of local supervision of the instruction of the school 
is found in a clause which directs that the trustees in each 
district shall cause " a public examination of their respective 
schools to be held previous to the annual vacation, ^ at which 
they or a majority of them shall assist." The strengthening of 
Parliamentary control of the school system is indicated by the 
provision that annual reports shall be made from each district 
to the Lieutenant-Governor and that these reports are to be by 
him laid before the Legislature " at its first meeting, for their 
inspection."- The enlargement of the scope of the grammar 
schools is secured by a clause which provides that in every 
district there shall be educated at the grammar school gratis 
ten children to be selected by lot from a larger number to be 
nominated by the trustees of the various common schools in 
the same district. In order to guard against an insufficient return 
from the government grant of one hundred pounds to each school 
It is provided that in future grammar school masters in districts 
where the average attendance does not exceed ten are to receive 
only fifty pounds per annum.^ 

During the twenty years between 1819 and 1839, there was 
very little legislation directly affecting the grammar schools. 
One new school— that of the Gore District— had been added 
to the original eight by the Act of 18 19. Two more— in the 
Ottawa District and the Bathurst District — were created in 1823. 
In addition to these. Upper Canada College, a (so-called) 
superior grammar school, was founded by the Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor. Sir John Colborne. in 1829. The interest of the Legis- 
lature in private schools is illustrated by a loan of two hundred 
and fifty pounds made in 1837, to the Grantham Academy at 

fjpp w'l.t'JIw-V^-^' ^D^'^i-^X^"^" ^"^ to repeal part of. and to amend, the law now in 
torce for establishing Public (Grammar) Schools in the Several Districts of this Province 

a/w/''sec Pro^'isions of the same." Sec. 4. Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 148-49. 

^Ibid., Sees. 6, 7. 



40 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

St. Catherines to enable it to liquidate a pressing debt. This 
act is significant as being the earliest step in a policy which 
the government of the Province has pursued down to the present 
day — that of granting financial aid to private institutions which 
for any reason are deemed to merit such assistance. 

Certain changes, were, however, made in the administration 
of the grammar schools. In 1823, on authority from Earl Bath- 
urst, the Colonial Secretary, a General Board of Education was 
appointed by the Executive with powers of supervision over both 
the grammar and the common schools,^ Although the existence 
and functions of this board were recognized by the Common 
School Act of 1824 it was made, during the ten years of its 
existence, the object of more than one attack in the House of 
Assembly. The reasons for these attacks as well as the deter- 
mination of the House to assert its right to a share in the 
administration of the schools are illustrated by the following 
quotations from a report, made in 1832, of a Select Committee 
of that body on Education. 

We trust that Your Excellency regarding the importance of Economy, 
will not continue the appropriation of three hundred pounds (£300) a 
year to a President of a General Board of Education — a Board which 
can be of no use if the District Boards of Education are constituted of 
persons active, zealous and conscientious in the discharge of the duties 
appertaining to their appointment. 

By the present law the District (Grammar) School Reports ought to 
be made directly to Your Excellency by whom they are laid before the 
Legislature. 

No systems are improved by being made more complicated; and the 
objection acquires greater force from the consequent increase in the num- 
ber of officers drawing upon the revenue devoted to Education and from 
the diminished importance of the Local Boards of Education, whose 
activitj'^ and usefulness will vary with the respect following their inde- 
pendence and direct responsibility to your Excellency." 

Another and perhaps a stronger reason for the opposition to 
which we have referred was the fact that the General Board 
of Education had stood for the supremacy of the Established 
Church in the field of public education, even going to the extent 
of using school land for the endowment of Church of England 
National Schools throughout the Province. This persistent hos- 

* Vide copy of letter from Earl Bathurst. Colorial Secretary, a-ath.nrzin;^ the appoint- 
ment of a General Board of Edi;c'-ition. Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. i8o. 

2 From Report of S-'lcct Coj-n. on Ed. as formiil&ted in an address to Lieutenant Gover- 
nor Sir John Colborne. — Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 272-273. 



Grammar School — Legislative and Adr,iinistratiz-c Aspects. 41 

tility on the part of the House of Assembly had its effect, for 
in a Confidential Despatch, dated July 1832, Lord Goderich. the 
Colonial Secretary, directs the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John 
Colborne, " to take the necessary legal measures for dissolving 
the Board and of re-investing in the Crown the estate of which 
they have had charge.'"^ These instructions were carried out 
and the Board formally dissolved in the following year (1833). 
No real change, however, was wrought by this act of the Execu- 
tive. The functions formerly performed by the Board were 
transferred to the Council of King's College. The membership 
of the two bodies was almost identical and the Archdeacon of 
York, the Reverend Doctor Strachan, was president of the Coun- 
cil as he had been of the Board before its dissolution. 

This transfer of authority received, so far as the grammar 
schools were concerned, legislative sanction in the Grammar 
School Act of 1839. Under this Act, as has been already men- 
tioned, the grammar schools were endowed with two hundred 
and fifty thousand acres of waste land. The revenue accruing 
from this land was to be distributed by the Council of King's 
College in the following manner: One hundred pounds was to 
be paid annually, as thitherto, to the trustees of the various 
districts, and, at the discretion of the Council, there might be 
granted a further amount to be used in providing " an additional 
master and other means of instruction."^ 

The Act provided further that district trustees might also 
receive from the General School Fund two hundred pounds to 
" aid in the erection of a suitable building for a school house 
in each district : Provided an equal sum shall be raised by 
subscription among the inhabitants for a like object and pro- 
vided they shall ensure the permanent insurance of such 
building."^ 

In the clause just quoted we have the first specific declaration 
of a principle so characteristic of the later educational policy 
of the Province — that of the co-operation of the Government 
with the local community not only in the payment of teachers 
and the supervision of the schools but also in the erection and 
equipment of school buildings. The adoption of this principle 



'Cody of Despatch in Doc. Hist., Vol. II, pp. 8S-87. 

'2nd Victiria, C'lar). X, "An Ar-t to Provide for the Advancement of Education in this 
Province," Sec. 5. — Doc. Hist., Vol. Ill, p. 170. 
^Ibid., Sec. 7. 



42 Public Education iii Upper Canada. 

paved the way for the estabhshment at a later date of certain 
minimum requirements as to school buildings, grounds and 
equipment which must be complied with before the Government 
grant can become available. 

Opportunity for grammar school expansion was given by 
the Act in a clause which states : " It shall and may be lawful 
for the Lieutenant-Governor to authorize a sum not exceeding 
One Hundred Pounds (fioo) per annum for each school, to 
be paid to any Board of Trustees, for the use and support 
of two other schools than the one in the Town where the 
Court House is situated, in any Town or Village in which the 
inhabitants shall provide a suitable school house, at which not 
less than sixty (60) scholars shall be educated : Provided any 
such additional school shall not be within six miles of the 
District Town ; and provided always, that nothing herein con- 
tained shall prevent the Council of King's College from extend- 
ing aid to four Grammar Schools (including the said two) 
other than the one established in the District Town should the 
said Council deem it expedient."^ An incidental provision which 
is worthy of notice was the formal adoption of the term " Gram- 
mar " as applied to these schools to the exclusion of the names 
'^ District " and " Public " which had theretofore been used. 

Although the first parliament which met after the union of 
Upper and Lower Canada in 1841 provided for a reorganization 
of the common school system, it did little for the grammar 
schools beyond continuing the conditions which already existed. 
Certain minor changes, were, however, effected. While the man- 
agement of the grammar school lands was left with the Council 
of King's College, the disbursement of the revenue from these 
lands and the general control of the schools themselves was 
transferred to the Executive. This latter change was doubtless 
due to a widespread dissatisfaction in the various districts with 
the character of the rules and regulations which had been drawn 
up by the Council for the government of the grammar schools. 
Such important reforms as the consolidation of the grammar 
and elementary schools into one system under the expert super- 
vision of a Superintendent of Public Instruction, the enlarge- 
ment of the powers of the Municipal Councils and of the local 



1 snd Victoria, Chap. X, "An Act to Provide, etc.," Sec. 8. 



Grammar School — Legislative and Administrative Aspects. 43 

trustees, the framing of a course of study more in keeping 
with modern conditions of life and the fixing of the qualifications 
of grammar school masters, remained for the Act of 1853 to 
accomplish. Any detailed discussion of that act^ would mani- 
festly be outside the province of this present study as would 
be also any attempt to trace the legislation which, from that 
date to the present time, has enlarged upon the principles which 
were there laid down. 



iPor such a discussion, vide Ross, School System of Ontario, pp. 113-115. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The District Grammar School — Its Peculiar Features. 

We may now proceed to a brief description of the actual 
working of the district grammar schools since such is neces- 
sary to any definite conchision as to the place which they filled 
in the social and educational life of the period. 

In England, as is well known, much of the fame and not a 
little of the efficiency of certain of the great public schools has 
arisen from the inseparable association with them of the names 
of a few great masters, such as Arnold and Temple of Rugby, 
Thring of Uppingham, Hawtrey of Eton and Bradley of Marl- 
borough. In the history of the district grammar schools only 
one name stands pre-eminently forth, that of the Reverend John 
Strachan, master in turn of the schools at Cornwall and York. 
A graduate of King's College, Aberdeen, and a schoolmaster 
of some experience in Scotland he came to Upper Canada, as 
has already been said, to take charge of the university planned 
by Governor Simcoe. The recall and departure of that official 
before ]\Ir. Strachan had reached the Province left the latter 
upon his arrival without any visible means of support. Accord- 
ing to his own story he would have returned to Scotland forth- 
with if he only had had the money for his passage. To provide 
himself a livelihood, he became, for the time being, a tutor in 
the family of the Honorable Richard Cartwright of Kingston. 
His success in that work paved the way for the opening of 
a school at Cornwall which subsequently (in 1806) became the 
grammar school of the Eastern District. Thither in a few 
years resorted the youth of many of the prominent families 
of the Province and from this school went out young men who 
were to occupy leading positions in the church, at the bar, in 
politics and in commercial life. A contemporary account of a 
public examination held in this school in 1805 is of interest 
as giving in some detail the curriculum of the institution. 

The students underwent in their different classes a rigid examination, 
as well at the instance of the gentlemen of learning who attended as of 
the Reverend Preceptor, in the following order: The Latin Classics, 



District Grammar School — Its Peculiar Features. 45 

Arithmetic, Book-keeping, Elements of Mathematics, Elements of Geog- 
raphy, of Natural and Civil History. The boys acquitted themselves 
with great credit; neither is it easy to declare in which branch of learn- 
ing they succeeded best. The whole was interspersed with different pieces 
of poetry and prose, many of the most humorous cast, composed for the 
occasion.' 

Mr. Strachan, it may be mentioned, had a penchant for versi- 
fying and his compositions (invariably in the heroic couplet form, 
it would appear) occupied during his head-mastership a promi- 
nent place in the public exercises of the two schools mentioned. 
Another feature which came to be characteristic of these exercises 
was the reproduction in an abbreviated form of famous debates 
of the British Houses of Parliament. Certain portions of selected 
speeches were memorized and recited by the older boys, the 
form of the debate being carefully preserved. This practice 
was supposed to give to the boys training in public speaking. 
That it helped to make ready orators of them is open to ques- 
tion, though it must have given them some understanding of 
parliamentary procedure while it doubtless encouraged in many 
an ambition to participate in political life. 

Mr. Strachan was certainly a teacher of marked ability. One 
of his pupils, speaking many years later, bears this testimony : 
" He was an excellent instructor. His scholars were deeply 
grounded in their work. The grammar was well mastered and 
every rule thereof deeply impressed on the memory. Every 
lesson was thoroughly dissected and everything connected with 
it thoroughly understood before we passed to another lesson. "^ 

In many respects Mr. Strachan was far in advance of his 
time in educational theory. The curriculum which we have 
just quoted gives evidence of his interest in geography and in 
" Natural and Civil History." This interest is doubtless due 
to the fact that in his student days these subject^ad a decided 
attraction for him. .^o proficient did he become in them, indeeA 
that he was offered a position as assistant to the Reverend James 
Brown, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of 
Glasgow. Mr Strachan was to perform the experiments which 
were to accompany the lectures. The unexpected retirement of 
the professor prevented the realization of this project and the 

* From the Upper Canada Gazette and Canadian Oracle of August 4th, 1805, quoted in 
Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 34. 

2 Bishop Fuller in a Sermon on the death of Bishop Strachan, Journal of Education for 
Upper Canada, Vol. XX (1867), p. 183. 



46 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

disappointment ensuing had, it would appear, not a little to do 
with Mr. Strachan's acceptance of the offer of a position in 
the New World. 

Mr. Strachan's rather liberal views as to the curriculum are 
further illustrated in a course of study which he suggested, in 
1829, for the grammar schools of the Province. This course 
included besides Latin and Greek, which naturally occupied the 
foremost place : ( i ) English, under which was placed, — Spelling ; 
Writing ; Grammar and Composition ; Elocution ; Civil and 
Natural History ; Geography, Ancient and Modern ; Use of the 
Globes ; Construction of Maps ; (2) Mathematics, which com- 
prised Arithmetic ; Book-keeping ; Algebra ; Euclid ; Trigonome- 
try ; Application to heights and distances ; Surveying ; Naviga- 
tion; Dialling; Elements of Astronomy, etc.; (3) French, which 
was to be studied during four of the five years of the course.^ 
After outlining the course, Mr. Strachan (then the Archdeacon 
of York and a Doctor of Divinity) made the following com- 
ment : " In presenting a detailed account of the mode of carry- 
ing this course of study into effect, I do not indulge in any 
imaginary process but give the actual practice of a school which 
flourished twenty-five years in this province." (Alluding of 
course to the Home District Grammar School.) 

Of Mr. Strachan's methods as a teacher, Dr. Scadding of 
Toronto, in a biographical sketch, gives the following interesting 
account. 

In (his) system the practical and the useful were bj^ no means sacri- 
ficed to the ornamental and theoretical or the merely conventional. Things 
were regarded as well as words. ... In regard to things — the 
science of common objects — we doubt if in the most complete of our 
modern schools there was ever awakened a greater interest or intelligence 
in relation to such matters. Who that has once participated in the excite- 
ment of its natural history class ever forgot it? Or in that of the his- 
torical or geographical exercises ? We venture to think that in many an 
instance the fullest experience of after life, in travel or otherwise, had 
often their association with ideas awakened then ; and often compared 
satisfactorily and pleasurably with the pictures of persons, animals and 
places given rudely as it may be in text-books ransacked and conned in 
a fervor of emulation then. The manner of study in these subjects was 
this: Each lad was required to prepare a set of questions to be put by 
himself to his fellows in the class. If a reply was not forthcoming and 



1 Letter of Dr. Strachan to the Rev. A. N. Bethune, quoted in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. no. 



District Grammar School — Its Peculiar Features. 47 

the information furnished b}' the questioner was judged correct, the latter 
" went up " and took the place of the other. This process besides being 
instructive and stimulating to the pupils, possessed the advantage of being, 
as is often proved, highly diverting to the teacher/ 

It must not be supposed, however, that Mr. Strachan was 
wholly free frotn the defects which were characteristic of the 
schools of his time both in the Old World and in the New. 
The paragraph just quoted illustrates the fact that he sought 
to develop among his pupils a spirit of emulation and competi- 
tion rather than one of helpful co-operation. Moreover he 
employed at times other incentives to progress and studious 
behavior which are still more at variance with the best thought 
of the present day. " Now and then," says Dr. Scadding, in 
a book of reminiscences, " a boy would be seen standing at 
one of the posts with his jacket inside out ; or he might be 
seen there in a kneeling posture for a number of minutes, or 
standing with the arm extended holding a book.'"'^ 

The two masters who in turn governed the Home District 
Grammar School between the date of Mr. Strachan's resignation 
of the office and 1829, the date of the absorption of the school 
by Upper Canada College, are both of them worthy of at least 
a passing notice. The first was Mr. Samuel Armour, a graduate 
of the University of Glasgow, " very much of a sportsman " 
so that when, during school hours, flocks of wild pigeons passed 
over the town and the sound of the firing of guns could be 
heard on all sides, " his attention would be very much drawn 
ofif from the class subjects." It was this Mr. Armour who, 
when there was only one copy of Eutropius available for use 
in the school, safeguarded the scholarship and the morals of 
his pupils by stitching together the leaves of the English trans- 
lation, which was bound along with the Latin text. 

Following Mr. Armour was the Reverend Thomas Phillips, 
a graduate of Queen's College, Cambridge, " the very ideal 
outwardly of an English country parson of the old type," and 
who " wore powder in the hair except when in mourning." It 
was he who introduced into the school the Eton Latin Grammar 
which superseded " Rudiman's Rudiments," a book " which really 
did give hints of something rational underlying what we learned 



1 The First Bishop of Toronto — a Review and a Study. 

2 Toronto of Old, p. ii. 



48 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

out of it." The Eton Greek Grammar " in its purely mediaeval 
and untranslated state also made its appearance. Our ' Palae- 
phatus ' and other extracts in the Graeca Minora were trans- 
lated by us not into English but into Latin, in which language 
all the notes and elucidations of difficulties in that book were 
given. Very many of the Greek * genitives absolute.' we remem- 
ber, were to be rendered by ' quum ' with the subjunctive plu- 
perfect, an enormous mystery to us at the time." It is small 
wonder that Dr. Scadding. from whom we have been quoting,^ 
adds the sententious remark " The Chcvaux dc frise set up 
across our pathway to knowledge were numerous and most for- 
bidding.'' Upon the establishment of Upper Canada College 
the Reverend J\Ir. Phillips was made the \"ice-Principal of that 
institution. 

A brief reference to conditions in some of the other grammar 
schools of the province may be in place here. A citizen of the 
town of Kingston, writing in 1814 to the editor of the Kingston 
Gazette makes the following comment on the local grammar 
school : 

It must be peculiarly gratifying to the public in general to see how 
completely the plan of the government has been carried into effect in the 
institution of the public schools throughout this province.' 

The success which this school in particular has met with has exceeded 
the most sanguine expectations. Youths not yet sixteen have gone as far 
as equations in Algebra — by no means imperfectly — and are well versed in 
the principles of Geometry and in the theory and practice of plane trigo- 
nometry. Their progress in Greek and Latin is no less surprising. 

That the grammar school of the Eastern District (situated 
at Cornwall) maintained, in a measure at least, the high standard 
set for it by its first master, Dr. Strachan, is shown by the fact 
that, in 1827. its master, the Reverend Hugh Urquhart was 
able to report as follows : " Four boys read in Ovid's Metamor- 
phoses and are ready to begin Sallust. Seven read in Adams' 
Select Lessons and are ready to commence the Lives of Cor- 
nelius Nepos. Six are finishing Rudiman's Rudiments, one boy 
is reading Mrgil." 

'"Of the remaining twelve boys, five are learning English 
grammar and reading ]\Iurray's Introduction : five are spelling 

* Toronto of Old. pp. 166-169. 

-Letter to the Editor of the Kingston Gazette dated 20th June, 1814. Quoted in Doc. 
Hist., Vol. I, p. 83. 



District Graminar School — Its Peculiar Features. 49 

words of four or five letters in Mayor's Spelling Book ; two 
confine their attention exclusively to Writing and Arithmetic. 
All the Latin boys are exercised twice a week in Geography 
(Ancient and Modern) and four times a week in Arithmetic."^ 

A disposition on the part of many parents to send their chil- 
dren to the United States to complete their education is noticed 
by several writers of the period, some of whom are careful to 
point out the dangers, both civic and moral, which such a course 
might involve. This tendency is illustrated in the case of the 
Ottawa District Grammar School. In 1827 the master of that 
school reports as follows : " Since I had the honour of reporting 
before on the state of the school, the scholars studying Greek 
and Latin under me have left the school and no others have yet 
supplied their place; they have gone to Burlington College in 
the United States there being a great tendency in this place 
to send their children to finish their education in the States. "- 

Apparently the least successful of all the grammar schools 
was that of the Western District situated at the town of Sand- 
wich. In 1828, the trustees reported to the House of Assembly 
that, partly because of the unhealthfulness of the town which 
prevented scholars being sent there from a distance, and partly 
because of the illiteracy of the neighboring farmers and their con- 
sequent inability " to appreciate a liberal education," the school 
" is composed principally of very young children learning the 
first rudiments of the English language, and among the five 
classical scholars there is but one at all advanced ; the rest 
have only commenced within six or eight months."^ 

An advertising card of the Johnstown District Grammar School 
(situated at Brockville), issued in March, 1839, is of interest 
because of the information which it gives about fees, boarding 
regulations and holidays. The card is quoted in full. 

This Institution is now under the care of the Reverend Henry Caswell, 
A. M., assisted by a competent Instructor. 

I. For Board and Tuition in the usual branches ;£30 per annum. Each 
boarder will provide for his washing, and is expected to be supplied with 
a Bed and Bedding, Towels and a Silver Spoon. Theological pupils 
boarding with the Principal will pay £50 per annum, and will receive, 
separately from the other pupils, such instructions in Divinity as the 



1 Reports from District Grammar Schools, 1827, given in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 
and seq. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 301. 



50 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

Ecclesiastical Authority may appoint with the addition of Hebrew and 
Chaldee, if desired. 

2. For instructions in Spelling, Reading and English Grammar, Arith- 
metic, Geography, History and Writing £4 per annum. 

3. For instruction in Greek, Latin, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, 
Composition, etc., £$ per annum. All accounts must be settled at Mid-, 
summer and Christmas. The full quarter is charged if the pupil is once 
entered. No deduction is allowed except at the discretion of the Principal. 

The hours of attendance are from 9 to 3 o'clock with an intermission of 
half an hour. The vacations are : four weeks at Midsummer, three at 
Christmas and one at Easter.' 

The remaining grammar schools of the Province were, it 
would seem, very similar in their general features to the one 
which has just been described, hence without further elaboration 
or quotation we may proceed to a summary of the chief char- 
acteristics which the grammar school as an institution exhibited. 
This summary will, of course, be little more than a re-statement 
of facts already presented. 

( 1 ) It was, in the main, a boarding school, though the 
school at York, on account of that place being the seat of Gov- 
ernment, was also largely patronized by day-pupils ; hence, in 
addition to the grant from the Government and the tuition fees 
which he received, the income of the master was generally 
considerably augmented by charges made for the boarding of 
pupils. 

(2) They were mainly in charge of clergymen who were 
most frequently of the Anglican and Presbyterian communions. 
The bearings of this fact are discussed in some detail in another 
connection. 

(3) They were mainly for the children of the well-to-do. 
The provision of the Act of 1819 that ten poor children should 
be educated gratis at each district grammar school did little 
if anything to change the aristocratic character of these schools. 
In fact. Dr. Strachan, in 1832, made the following statement 
before a Select Committee of the House of Assembly on Edu- 
cation : " No district has. I believe, availed itself of this privi- 
lege nor will they until the School Fund or the Legislature 
assume the whole expense of such scholars while they remain 



1 Doc. Hist., Vol. IV., p. 156. 



District Grammar School — Its Peculiar Features. 51 

at the District Grammar Schools in board and lodging as well 
as in tuition."^ 

(4) They adhered as closely as their circumstances would 
permit to the classical traditions of their prototypes in the mother 
country. In fact, it was not till 1853 that Latin and Greek 
were dethroned from their place at the head of the curriculum 
and it was not till 1871 that the name " grammar school " gave 
way to the more modern name of " high school." 

Reference has already been made in this chapter to Upper 
Canada College " the superior grammar school " founded in 
1829 by Sir John Colborne. It has been mentioned in the dis- 
cussion of the Land Grant for Schools, since, at its establish- 
ment, it was assigned 66,000 acres of land from the university 
endowment. Its relation to the Anglican Church and the diffi- 
culties which arose therefrom will be dealt with in a subse- 
quent chapter. It will be sufficient here to show wherein it 
differed from the district grammar schools. 

In the first place it was a much closer approximation to the 
public schools of England, being directly patterned after Eliza- 
beth College in the Island of Guernsey, an institution which had 
been founded, or rather re-founded in 1826 by Sir John Colborne 
himself. Upper Canada College was, in the second place, a 
much more pretentious institution than even the largest of the 
grammar schools (that of the Home District) had been. In 
fact its establishment led to the discontinuance for some seven 
years of the Home District School. The principal and his 
four leading associates were all graduates of Oxford or Cam- 
bridge, and three of these five men had achieved high honors 
at their respective universities. Of these men and the influence 
which they exerted. Dr. Scadding in a memorial volume pub- 
lished in 1884 and styled Toronto, Past and Present, says : " They 
were all of them instrumental in inaugurating and fostering in 
Upper Canada a species of scholarship which is peculiarly Eng- 
lish. The jar long retains the odour of the wine with which 
when new it was first filled. To this day there lingers here 
and there in Canada, Upper and Lower, some of the aroma of 



1 From evidence given by Dr. Stracban before the Select Committee of the House of 
Assembly on Education 1832. In Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 88. 



52 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

the old Massic first supplied to the country by Dr. Harris and 
his colleagues."^ 

Upper Canada College during the thirteen years of its history 
with which we are immediately concerned certainly performed 
a valuable work, since throughout that period it was the only 
College within the Province. In fact, as has already been men- 
tioned, the House of Assembly was at one time anxious, because 
of the many restrictions contained in the King's College Charter 
of 1827, to create out of Upper Canada College a Provincial 
university with a charter far more liberal than the one to which 
so much exception had been taken. 

The limitations of Upper Canada College were, however, of 
a serious nature and led to opposition from at least three dif- 
ferent quarters. 

I. There was an element in the local community which objected 
to the purely classical character of the curriculum. The senti- 
ment of these people was voiced in a petition to the Lieutenant- 
Governor asking for such changes in the character of the instruc- 
tion " as will enable Your Excellency's petitioners and others 
in similar circumstances to have their sons educated in a college 
in such branches of an English education as will qualify them 
for discharging, with efficiency and respectability, the scientific 
and other business of tradesmen and mechanics."^ In conse- 
quence of this petition and of an active propaganda of the views 
contained in it, provision was finally made, to use the words 
of Principal Harris, for the introduction of " a greater pro- 
portion of miscellaneous (not classical, that is,) studies especially 
in the lower part of the College." 

II. There was strong opposition to the College from the inhabi- 
tants of other districts of Upper Canada. They felt, and rightly, 
that too great a proportion of the educational revenues of the 
Province were being expended for the benefit of the town of 
York and especially for the benefit of a certain aristocratic 
element in that town. This opposition found frequent expression 
both in the House of Assembly and elsewhere. The most out- 
spoken critic of all was Mr. William Lyon Mackenzie, a member 
of the House of Assembly during several sessions, at one time 
Mayor of York and for many years editor of The Colonial 

1 op. cit., p. lOQ. 

2 Copy of petition given in Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 20- 



District Grammar School — Its Peculiar Features. 53 

Advocate, a radical newspaper. Mackenzie was a man of great 
intellectual ability and of entire honesty of purpose but, un- 
fortunately for himself and others, he was decidedly lacking in 
judgment. In his anxiety to overthrow " The Family Com- 
pact " as the small circle of officeholders and influential advisers 
of the Lieutenant-Governor was called, he planned and in fact 
began an armed coup d'etat. The " Mackenzie Rebellion " failed 
almost before it had begun and he himself and his lieutenants 
were forced to flee to the United States. The " Rebellion " 
served at least this useful purpose: it called the attention of 
the Imperial Parliament to certain flagrant evils in the govern- 
ment of Upper Canada and had not a little to do with causing 
the investigations undertaken by Imperial Command, by Lord 
Durham, which investigations, as is well known, prepared the 
way for the advent of responsible government in both the 
Canadas. 

The following extracts from "Articles of Impeachment or 
Public Accusations , . . Against the Lieutenant-Governor 
of the Province and the Advisers of the Crown," published in 
The Colonial Advocate in January, 1832, will show the grounds 
of Mr. Mackenzie's criticisms of the Lieutenant-Governor's edu- 
cational policy and will also serve incidentally as an example 
of his vigorous style. 

He (i. e. Sir John Colborne) has endeavored to lay the foundation of 
a dangerous system of education. 

(1) By desiring the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford to 
elect " the Principal and most of the Masters " of the Provincial College 
(i. e. of Upper Canada College), although that Vice-Chancellor and the 
institution over which he presides are bitterly opposed to the patriotic 
and liberal Cabinet of His Majesty, and although Oxford has been justly 
characterized as a sanctuary where exploded systems and obsolete preju- 
dices find shelter and protection. 

(2) By conducting the affairs of the College in this Town on a narrow, 
bigoted and sectarian plan, calculated to rise up a class of educated men 
opposed to the liberal principles of the British Government and wedded to 
the aristocratic notions of the fallen Tory oligarchy. 

(3) By arbitrarily blending the Home District School and (Royal) 
Grammar School with the above dangerous sectarian institution.' 

III. While Mackenzie's hostility to Upper Canada College 
was due to considerations of a political nature, there were others 

> Given in Doc. Hist., Vol. II. p. 58. 



54 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

who withheld their sympathy because they regarded it as a 
menace to reHgious Hberty and equahty. Chief among these 
M'ere the leaders in the Methodist and Presbyterian denomina- 
tions. The measures taken by these men to safeguard what 
they believed to be the rights of their respective churches will 
be treated in detail in one of the following chapters, hence nothing 
further need be said on the subject in this place. 



CHAPTER V. 
The Common School — Its External History. 

We have seen that in the Land Grant of 1797 no provision 
was made for the endowment of elementary education. The 
reason for this lay doubtless in the fact that the work of ele- 
mentary instruction was thought by the political leaders of the 
time to belong to the family, to the church and to philan- 
thropic exercise rather than to the state. This view continued 
to exert a powerful influence throughout the entire period now 
under review. 

Formal elementary instruction apparently began in Upper 
Canada with what were known as Garrison schools. The chap- 
lains of military posts, such as Kingston and Newark, were 
in the habit of gathering a few children about them whom they 
instructed in religion and in the rudiments of an English edu- 
cation. Later, when settlements had grown up at various points 
along the frontier, other private schools were established. These 
flourished for longer or shorter terms and sought to minister 
to what their proprietors conceived to be the educational wants 
of their respective communities. Two or three of these schools 
attempted instruction in the classics and higher mathematics and 
hence may be regarded as the embryos from which grammar 
schools later developed. One such school — that of the Reverend 
John Strachan at Cornwall — has been mentioned in the chapter 
immediately preceding. Dr. Hodgins in his Documentary History 
of Education in Upper Canada has collected from the local news- 
papers of the time a number of the advertisements of these 
schools. In addition to this he has given a very carefully pre- 
pared and rather extensive list of the schools of this class which 
were in operation in various parts of the Province between 
1786 and 1810.^ Besides the school at Cornwall, to which ref- 
erence has just been made, two others on this list are referred 
to as classical schools, one of these having been opened at 
Kingston in 1786 by the Reverend Dr. Stuart and the other 
having been established at York in 1802 by Mr. W. W. Baldwin. 

1 Vide Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 30, 31. 



56 Public Education in I'tt^''' Canada. 

The remaining schools — some twenty or more — were all plainly 
elementary in character. Of these one was an evening school 
opened at Newark (Niagara) in 1797 by a Mr. Richard Cockrel. 
another was an ori->han sc1kx)1 founded, in 1700. at St. Catherines, 
and two others were regular Kxirding schools. One of these 
last was kept by a Mr. and Mrs. Tyler, on the Niagara river 
near Newark. The " card " of this school is sufficiently inter- 
esting to deserve a reproduction here. 

Mr. aiul Mrs. Tyler t:ike the liberty of informing the puMic that on 
Monday, the 1st of February (lixij") they will oihmi their sehool for young 
people — Men and Ladies. 

They will keep a regular day sehool and night school. Children of each 
sex above the age of four years will be received, and the price will be in 
proportion to the kind of instruction the parents may wish their children 
to receive. 

They will teach in Reading. Writing and Arithmetic ; the young ladies 
will be instructed in all that is necessary for persons of their se.x to appear 
decently and to be useful in the world, and of all that concerns house- 
keeping, either for those who wish to live in town or country. 

The situation is healthy and agreeable, and the house suitable for a 
number of boarders. People who. during the heat of summer, may be 
advised to move for change of air will meet with proper lodgings, healthy 
and cheap boarding. 

Finally, nothing shall be neglected for health, instruction, religion and 
good morals, and they hope their endeavors to satisfy the public will more 
and more merit protection and encouragement. 

Mrs. Tyler having been bred in the line of mantua-maker, will receive 
and do her endeavors to execute her work in the neatest manner to the 
satisfaction of those who honor her with their custom. 

She embraces this opportunity to render her sincere thanks for the pro- 
tection she has received this day.' 

Dr. Ryerson in his History of the United Empire Loyalists 
mentions the fact that elementary schools were early established 
in all the loyalist comnuniities where the number of settlers 
was sufficient to make such an undertaking possible. Just what 
the character of these schools was it is impossible now to deter- 
mine but they must, from the very nature of the case, have been 
exceedingly elementary as well as rather intermittent. 

As early as 171^1. r.n attempt was maile in the Province to 
secure the exclusion from the schools of uncertificated teachers. 
In the Upper Canada Gazette (the official organ of the Govern- 
ment) for July of that year there appears the following notice: 

> Doc. Hist.. Vol. I. p. .;.- 



Coniman School — Its External History. 57 

" We are happy in being informed that no person will be coun- 
tenanced or permitted by the Government to teach school in 
any part of this Province unless he shall have passed an exam- 
ination before one of our commissioners and receive a certificate 
from under his hand specifying that he is adequate to the 
important task of a tutor."^ 

The first instance of a popular attempt to interest the Provincial 
Legislature in the support of elementary schools appears in 1804 
in the petition from certain inhabitants of the County of Glen- 
garry which is referred to in the chapter on " The Land Grant 
for Schools." This petition, as we have seen, was unavailing 
as were also the numerous attempts of a similar character 
throughout the decade which followed. We have noticed in the 
preceding chapter the agitation for elementary schools which 
followed close after the passing of the District (Grammar) 
School Act of 1807 and the sympathy which on the whole the 
House of Assembly exhibited towards the movement; conse- 
quently we may proceed at once to a discussion of the first piece 
of definite common school legislation — the so-called Common. 
School Act of 1816. This legislation, as has already been re- 
marked, was in the nature of a compromise and was consented 
to by the Legislative Council on condition that the grammar 
schools were to remain undisturbed. 

The need of the Province as regards elementary education 
was recognized by the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Francis Gore, 
in his Speech from the Throne at the opening of the legislative 
session for 1816. " The dissemination of letters is," he observed, 
" of the first importance to every class ; and to aid in so desir- 
able an object, I wish to call your attention to some provision 
for the establishment of schools in each township, which shall 
afford the first principles to the children of the inhabitants 
and prepare such of them as may require further instruction, 
to receive it in the District Schools."^ 

The Common School Act which was foreshadowed in this 
speech granted £6,000 annually for school purposes to the ten 
districts into which the Province was at that time divided. 
The amount apportioned to the several districts varied from 
two hundred to one thousand pounds. As soon as a competent 

> Doc. Hist.. Vol. I, p. 33. 
^ Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. g6. 



58 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

number of persons inhabiting " any Town, Township, Village 
or Place " should unite and build a school house and engage to 
furnish twenty scholars or more, they might, after giving due 
notice, meet and appoint three trustees who should have the 
authority to examine and appoint a teacher. Such teacher was 
required to be a natural born subject of Great Britain or to 
have taken the oath of allegiance and he might be removed by 
the trustees for any impropriety of conduct and a successor 
appointed. The trustees were empowered to make rules and 
regulations for the governing of the school subject to the 
approval of the District Board of Education to whom also they 
were to make a report every three months stating the text-books 
used and the rules in force in the school. Every year, a special 
report was to be made informing the District Board of the 
number of scholars, the branches of study taught and the gen- 
eral condition of the school. The District Board was in turn 
required to compile an annual report to the Lieutenant-Governor 
to be by him transmitted to the Legislature. These district 
trustees were to be not less than three nor more than five in 
number and were to be appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor. 

Teachers were to receive their portions of the Provincial grant 
every six months upon presenting to the District Treasurer a 
certificate, signed by the local trustees, that they had given 
acceptable service during that period and that the number of 
scholars attending their respective schools had not been less 
than twenty. The grants made to each district under the Act 
were to be apportioned among the various schools according to 
the number of scholars in attendance but no district was to 
receive more than twenty-five pounds annually. 

A free text-book system in any district was made possible 
by the following clause, " That it shall and may be lawful for 
the District Boards to be appointed in each and every District 
in this Province to apply such part of the money hereby granted 
to the several Districts not exceeding one hundred pounds as 
they shall see fit, for the purchase of proper books for the use 
of the said common schools, and after having purchased such 
books to cause them to be distributed for the use of such schools 
in such manner as to them shall seem meet."^ 

1 56th Geome III. Chap. XXXVI, An act granting to His Majesty a sum of money to 
be applied to the use of Common Schools, etc., Sec. 12. 



Common School — Its External History. 59 

The Act of 1816 was limited in its operation to four years 
from the date of its passing. In the discussion, in the Legis- 
lature and elsewhere, which accompanied the movement for its 
re-enactment certain grave defects in its operation were pointed 
out. A writer in The Christian Recorder for April, 1819, alludes 
to one of these as follows : " The Bill was very much hurt by 
the insertion of a clause that there should be a school in every 
town, village or place where twenty scholars could be collected. 
These loose words admit of a latitude of interpretation which 
could not have been intended, and multiply schools to an extent 
which it would require three times the Provincial revenue to 
support."^ It is somewhat difficult to reconcile the statement 
just quoted, with the fact that an investigation in 1820 showed 
that in certain districts considerable sums of the money avail- 
able for common school purposes had remained unappropriated. 

Whatever may have been the determining cause or causes, 
the Common School Act of 1820 reduced the annual Provincial 
grant from six thousand pounds to two thousand five hundred 
pounds. This reduction was manifestly favored by the Execu- 
tive since, in his speech from the Throne in opening the Parlia- 
ment of 1820, the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, 
says: " It is neither prudent nor desirable to proceed (with the 
bill as it is, that is), but measures may possibly be adopted to 
provide the same good at a more moderate expense."^ That 
the good produced was as " moderate " as the expense incurred 
is scarcely to be doubted by any one who studies with any care 
the character of the common schools of the time. 

The Act of 1820 modified that of 181 6 in other respects as 
follows: (i) The grant to each district was to be equally 
divided among the teachers of that district with the proviso that 
no teacher was to receive from the grant more than twelve 
pounds ten shillings per annum. (2) No warrant was to issue 
to any District Treasurer till the sums already paid to him had 
been accounted for. (3) Provision was made for the return 
to the Receiver-General of any sums remaining unexpended in 
the hands of the District Treasurers. 

The Act, like its predecessor, was limited in its operation to 
four years. In 1824, the clause of the Act of 1820 restricting 



iGiyen in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 156. 
^Ibid, p. 169. 



6o Public Education in Upper Canada. 

the period of its operation to four years, was repealed, the pro- 
visions of the Acts of 1816 and 1820 were enlarged to include 
schools among the Indians of the Province, and one hundred and 
fifty pounds was appropriated " for the encouragement of Sunday 
Schools and for affording the means of moral and religious 
instruction to the more indigent and remote settlements in the 
several districts throughout the Province."^ 

In one of the sections of this Act there appears also the first 
indication (in the case of the common schools at least) of a tend- 
ency to require of the teacher a certificate of qualification from an 
authority more central and presumably better qualified to act as 
an examining body, than the local school trustees. The clause 
in question reads as follows : 

Every teacher of a Common School before he shall be entitled to receive 
any portion of public money shall be examined by the Board of Education 
in the District in which he shall have taught or is about to teach a Com- 
mon School, or shall obtain a certificate from at least one member of such 
Board certifying his ability and fitness to teach the same, due regard at 
all times being had to the degree of education wanting, or to the branches 
necessary to be taught in the township, village or place in which such 
teacher hath undertaken, or is about to undertake, to teach a Common 
School." 

The Act of 1824 contained, among other things, the first legis- 
lative recognition of a General Board which was to have super- 
vision of public education in the Province and especially of 
school funds and school lands. The one hundred and fifty pounds 
granted to Sunday Schools was to be " at the disposal of the 
general body that is or may be appointed by the Governor, 
Lieutenant-Governor, or person administering the Government 
of this Province, for the superintendence of education within 
the same, to be by them laid out and expended for the purchase 
of books and tracts designed to afford moral and religious 
instruction, which said books and tracts, when so purchased, 
shall be distributed by the said General Board in equal pro- 
portion among the several District Boards of Education through- 
out this Province."^ 



* 4th George IV, Chap. VIII, An act to make permanent and extend the provisions of 
the laws now in force for the establishment and regulation of Common Schools throughout 
this Province, etc.. Sec. I. 

2 Section VI of Act. 

3 Sec. II of Act. 



Common School — Its External History. 6i 

At the risk of needless repetition we will proceed to re-state 
with some amplifications the main facts concerning this important 
body. 

The initiative in the matter of a General Board of Educa- 
tion had, it would appear, come from the Lieutenant-Governor, 
Sir Peregrine Maitland. From a communication sent by him to 
his Executive Council in May, 1823, we learn that the formation 
of such a board had already been suggested to the Colonial 
Secretary, Earl Bathurst, and that the latter official had " signi- 
fied his sanction " of the plan proposed. In view of this endorse- 
ment of his policy. Sir Peregrine proposed to the Executive 
Council " the appropriation of some of the lands set apart for 
the Endowment of the University, in such manner as shall readily 
and securely create a fund to enable the General Board of Edu- 
cation to enter on its duties either by conveying a portion of 
lands in trust to the Board of Education (subject in all of its 
proceedings to the sanction of the Executive Government) — or 
by such other mode as may to the Committee of Council appear 
most expedient."^ 

The body in question was appointed by the Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor this same year, with Dr. Strachan as President. To enable 
the Board to carry on its work, some one hundred and ninety 
thousand acres of land — a most liberal allowance it would seem — 
v/as assigned to it by " His Majesty's Government." The Board 
likewise at its first meeting (June 14th, 1823) " directed the 
President to submit to His Excellency, the Lieutenant-Governor, 
the propriety of transferring the School Fund, now in the hands 
of the Receiver-General, to the Treasurer (of the Board) as 
contingent expenses for stationery, advertisements, etc., which 
must be immediately incurred."^ 

The agitation by the House of Assembly against the General 
Board of Education has been described in the last chapter. 
Mention has also been made of the discontinuance of the Board 
in 1833 at the instance of the Home Government. The con- 
nection of the Board with the so-called " National " schools 
will be dealt with at some length in a chapter which is to follow. 
Apart from its efforts on behalf of the schools just named, 



iProm letter, dated May 30th, 1823, to Executive Council, given in Doc. Hist., Fol. I, 
p. 180. 

^From minutes of first meeting of Board, Doc. Hist., Vol. Ill, p. 1. 



62 Public Education in Upper Caimda. 

the Board devoted itself mainly to the making of rules for the 
government of schools, to the prescribing and in some cases to 
the publishing of text-books for use in the common schools, and 
to the seconding of the efforts of Sir John Colborne in the 
establishment of Upper Canada College. 

The noteworthy fact about the General Board of Education, 
and the fact which in the end led to its discontinuance, was the 
entire absence of any responsibility on its part to the popular 
branch of the legislature. It could and it did undertake to 
divert the proceeds of the school lands to purposes of which 
the House of Assembly cordially disapproved. It could and it 
did undertake to supersede the common schools established by 
Parliamentary enactments with a system of schools wholly sec- 
tarian in character. Apparently Dr. Egerton Ryerson, subse- 
quently the founder of the present common school system of 
Ontario, had these circumstances in mind when, in 1833, he 
offered the following criticism of a proposed piece of legislation. 

The next leading feature of the Bill is the appointment of a General 
Board of Education. . . . This is proposed to be left to the Gov- 
ernor, Lieutenant-Governor, or person administering the Government ; 
a proposition in our opinion radically objectionable. It makes the system 
of Education, in theory, a mere engine of the Executive, — a system which 
is liable to all the abuse, suspicion, jealousy and opposition caused by 
despotism; and it withholds from the system of Common School educa- 
tion, in its first and prominent feature, that character of common interest 
and harmonious co-operation, which, as we humbly conceive, are essential 
to its success, and even to its acceptance with the Province. Education 
is an object in which the Government as an individual portion of the 
Province, and the people at large, possess, in some respects, a common 
interest; consequently they should exercise a joint, or common, control.' 

The Common School Act of 1824 continued in force until 
the union of the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada in 
1841. The amount of the annual grant for common schools 
varied slightly, from time to time, up till 1835, when, by legis- 
lative enactment, it was increased to five thousand six hundred 
and fifty pounds. 

We have noticed in a preceding chapter the various attempts 
made from 1831 onward to secure a land endowment for the 
common schools ; we will now proceed to a brief characteriza- 



1 Article in Christian Guardian of 15th of January, 1834, given in Doc. Hist., Vol. II, 
p. 149. 



Common School — Its External History. 63' 

tion of certain attempts made, during that period to secure a 
reorganization of the common school system itself. Although 
for various reasons, which are too complex to be analyzed here, 
they failed of becoming law, they are significant as showing 
an educational awakening similar in nature, if not in extent, to 
that which was taking place about the same time in many 
parts of the United States. 

In 1 83 1, a bill was introduced in the House of Assembly 
by a Mr. William Buell, Jr., which provided for (i) three super- 
intendents of schools in each township; (2) a District Board of 
Education consisting of five members chosen by a board of 
electors made up of representatives from the township superin- 
tendents ; (3) a division of the Provincial Grant among the 
various townships according to their jxjpulation.^ 

At the session of 1833-34 a Mr. Mahlon Burwell brought 
forward in the Assembly a bill of which the following were the 
principal features: (i) A General Board of Education and Dis- 
trict Boards of Education appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor ; 
(2) a Board of Township School Commissioners to have super- 
vision of the work of the local school trustees; (3) the estab- 
lishment of a School Fund " to consist of such sum or sums 
of money as may annually be appropriated by the Legislature 
out of the Provincial Revenues and the moneys arising from 
the sale or leasing of common school lands," also of an amount 
equal to the Legislative appropriations " to be raised by assess- 
ment, by order of the Quarter Sessions in their respective dis- 
tricts on the rateable property."^ Dr. Ryerson in an editorial 
comment upon this bilP remarks that the idea of a local tax 
corresponding in amount to the Provincial grant is probably 
borrowed by the author of the bill from New York State. This 
comment, coming from such a quarter, is significant as fore- 
shadowing the considerable influence which the example of the 
United States and especially that of the state just named, was 
to exert upon school legislation in Canada during the next 
twenty years. 

A common school bill passed by the House of Assembly in 
1835* provided for: (i) Three superintendents of schools in 

1 Copv of Bill Doc. Hist., Vol. II, pp. 34-36. 

'^Doc Hist., Vol. II, p. 149. 

^In Article already cited. 

^See copy of Bill, Doc. Hist., Vol. II, pp. 206-208. 



64 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

each township with duties as follows: (a) To select three stu- 
dents from the common schools of the township who were to 
be considered as applicants for admission to the district grammar 
schools; (b) "to nominate a fit and proper person to be a mem- 
ber of the District Board of Education." (2) A District Board 
of Education who should (a) provide for the free boarding and 
tuition at the District Grammar School of a number of scholars 
not exceeding eight from each county; (b) arrange for a yearly 
public examination of all the school teachers in each county. 
(3) An increase of the yearly common school grant to twelve 
thousand pounds. 

The teachers' examinations provided by this bill were to be 
presided over in each case by the district grammar school master 
assisted by such members of the District Board as might reside 
in the county. Certain additions to their regular salaries (one 
pound, fifteen shillings, and ten shillings respectively) were to 
be granted to the three teachers who stood highest at this 
examination. The bill in question was rejected by the Legis- 
lative Council and this rejection, along with that of several other 
important bills which had been passed by the House at this and 
preceding sessions, led to a prolonged controversy between the 
two houses and to the publication by the Council of an elaborate 
defence of its actions. 

The House of Assembly had. in connection with the educa- 
tional deliberations of 1835, ^^^^ the need of information as to 
the school systems of other countries, consequently, in April 
of that year, three of its members, Dr. Charles Duncombe, Dr. 
T. D. Morrison and Mr. William Bruce were appointed a com- 
mittee " to enquire into the system and management of schools 
and colleges in order to report fully upon the systems of educa- 
tion pursued in the United States."^ 

Dr. Duncombe as the accredited representative of the com- 
mittee visited, to use his own words, " the Western, Eastern, 
Middle and some of the Southern states " and made upon his 
return a rather extensive report.^ He studied with some care 
the school systems of Boston, New York, Albany, Philadelphia. 
Baltimore and Cincinnati. His catalogfue of the different kinds 



* Letter, dated 24th of February, 1836, from Commissioners T. D. Morrison and William 
Bruce to the Speaker of the House of Assembly in Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 288. 
2 Report given in full in Doc. Hist., Vol. II, pp. 289-308. 



Common School — Its External History. 65 

of schools which came under his notice includes : " Infant 
Schools, City Free Schools, Grammar Schools, Literary Insti- 
tutes, Eclectic Institutes, High Schools, Monitorial Schools, 
Lancaster Schools, Manual Labor Schools, Primary Schools 
and .Writing Schools." In addition to the specific duties 
imposed on him by his instructions, Dr. Buncombe amassed by 
inquiry and by reading, considerable information as to the edu- 
cational policies of different European countries, notably Scot- 
land, France and Prussia. 

Though he saw much to approve in certain quarters of the 
United States and noticed a general " spirit of improvement " 
abroad, yet he was able to testify : " In the United States, so far 
as I have witnessed and am capable of judging, their common 
school systems are as defective as our own. They have, accord- 
ing to their public documents, about eighty thousand common 
school teachers but very few of whom have made any prepara- 
tion for their duties ; the most of them accidentally assume their 
office as a temporary employment." 

In 1836, Dr. Duncombe presented to the House of Assembly, 
along with the report of which we have just spoken, the draft 
of a Common School Bill.^ The leading provisions of this 
measure were as follows : ( 1 ) There should be a General Super- 
intendent of Education for the Province; (2) there should be in 
each township three school commissioners and three school in- 
spectors. The school commissioners were assigned the duty of 
dividing the townships into school sections and of co-operating 
with the inspectors in the examination of teachers. The inspec- 
tors, as their name implies, were the official school visitors. (3) 
The bill anticipated the normal schools of a much later period by 
providing that, when the yearly school revenue should exceed 
ten thousand pounds by one thousand pounds or more, such 
excess should be employed in establishing four schools for the 
training of teachers — two for men and two for women ; (4) 
school gardens were provided for in a clause which authorized 
school trustees to purchase or lease " a lot or parcel of land, 
farming utensils, seeds, grains and grasses for the use, benefit 
and behoof of that District, for the use of the teachers of the 
school or to be annually apportioned among the scholars of the 



^ Doc. Hist., Vol. II, pp. 309-322. 



66 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

school ; or otherwise employed and occupied for the profit and 
instruction of the school or parts thereof, in horticulture, agri- 
culture or otherwise, growing plants, fruits, grasses and grains 
as the trustees, together with the school teacher for the time 
being, may think fit."^ (5) School workshops might in a similar 
way be acquired and employed " for the purpose of enabling the 
scholars of the school taught in that District profitably to employ 
a portion of their time in the acquiring a knowledge of (some) 
mechanical skill, art, business or profession."^ 

It remains now to mention briefly the chief provisions of the 
Common School Act of 1841.^ This Act was passed by the first 
parliament of the united provinces, and in fact, only a few 
months after the Act of Union had come into effect. This 
measure can be safely said to have inaugurated a new order 
of things in regard to the common schools, although many needed 
reforms were left for future legislation to accomplish. 

The more important features of the act in question were : ( i ) 
The establishment of a permanent school fund; (2) a grant 
of fifty thousand pounds annually to common schools; (3) the 
appointment at a liberal salary of a Superintendent of Education, 
one of whose duties was " to visit annually each of the Munici- 
pal Districts in the Province (now including both Upper and 
Lower Canada) and ascertain the state of the common schools 
therein " and who was instructed to labor for " the establish- 
ment of uniformity in the conduct of the common schools through- 
out the Province; (4) the making of special regulations for the 
organization of schools, the examination of teachers and the 
distribution of school moneys in incorporated towns and cities ; 
(5) the formulation of certain conditions under which separate 
schools for Roman Catholics might be established and supported 
by the school rates paid by Roman Catholic tax-payers. 

The first four of these were certainly much-needed reforms. 
The last was essentially a measure of expediency, made necessary 
by the fact that the vast majority of the inhabitants of Lower 
Canada were Roman Catholics. They could not be expected 
to send their children to Protestant schools and neither Protes- 
tants nor Roman Catholics were in favor of the exclusion of 

Woe. Hist. Vol. II, p. 322. 
*Ibid. 

'4th and 5th Victoria, Chap. XVIII, An act to repeal certain acts . . and to make 
provision for the establishment and maintenance of common schools. 



Common School — Its External History. 67 

religious instruction from the schools, which was the only 
remaining alternative. 

There was important school legislation in 1843 and again in 
1846, but this was mainly for the purpose of correcting certain 
mistakes and making good certain deficiencies in the Act of 
1841. Both these measures are summarized in Dr. Ross's well- 
known work on The School System of Ontario, and to that 
book the reader, anxious to acquaint himself with their specific 
content, is referred. It would be interesting to follow in detail 
the important constructive labors of the Reverend Dr. Ryerson, 
Superintendent of the Schools of Upper Canada from 1844 till 
1876, but such an undertaking lies plainly outside of the province 
of the present study. 



CHAPTER VI. j 

The Common School — Its Essential Characteristics. 

When we turn to a consideration of the character of com- 
mon school education between 1816 and 1841, we find a con- 
siderable mass of material bearing on the subject, but little 
that lends itself to systematic classification and arrangement. 
Hence such conclusions as may be drawn here, will necessarily 
be quite general in character. 

We may say at the outset that the schoolhouses, the school- 
masters and the school curriculum were on the whole decidedly 
in keeping with the pioneer conditions of the period. The coun- 
try was being opened up. Settlers were pouring in, many of 
whom had very little conception of the character of the life 
to which they were coming. Children as well as parents were 
absorbed in a struggle with an environment from which, for 
some years at least, little was to be gained beyond a mere liveli- 
hood. It was said more than once in those early days that a 
farm could be won from " the bush " only at the cost of two 
generations. The boy of ten years, since he could drive a 
yoke of oxen, was put to work and hence had little time for 
further schooling. The winter schools broke up about " sugar- 
making " time because the children would thereafter be needed 
at home. 

It must be remembered, however, that the comparatively primi- 
tive conditions which existed, while they gave little time for the 
conventional training of the school, also made little demand for it. 
To be able to handle the axe and the plow was a more necessary 
accomplishment even than to read, write and cipher. Then agam, 
the majority of the settlers were poor, the Government, as we 
have seen, was far from liberal in its grants for common schools, 
the teachers were often most unsuited to their work, both as 
regards character and equipment, hence much of the " school- 
ing " which the children of the pioneers received could scarcely 
be dignified with the name of education. It is small wonder, 
then, that one writer on pioneer life in Upper Canada should 
inform us that a petition which was sent to the Old Country 



Common School — Its Essential Characteristics. 69 

in 1828 bore on it seventy-eight thousand X marks,^ the in- 
ference of course being that a very large proportion of the adult 
male population of the Province at that date were wholly 
illiterate. 

One of the most scholarly of Canadian historians, Dr. Bour- 
inot, finds an excuse for this illiteracy, and its accompanying 
lack of refinement, in the condition of mind which a solitary life 
engenders as well as in the hard life of the backwoods which 
made schooling difficult. He insists also, and rightly, that these 
defects had certain redeeming virtues associated with them. His 
remarks are worth quoting at some length. 

The isolation of their (i. e. the settlers') lives, he tells us 
had naturally the effect of making even the better class narrow-minded, self- 
ish, and at last careless of anything like refinement. Men who lived for years 
without the means of frequent communication with their fellows, without 
opportunity for social instructive intercourse, except what they might enjoy 
at rare intervals through the visit of some intelligent clergyman or tourist, 
might well have little ambition except to gratify the grosser wants of 
their natures. The post-office, the school and the church were only to be 
found in the majority of cases at a great distance from their homes. 
Their children, as likely as not, grew up in ignorance even with educational 
facilities at hand; for in those days the parent had absolute need of the 
son's help in the avocations of pioneer life. Yet with all these disadvan- 
tages, these men displayed a spirit of manly independence which was in 
some measure a test of their capacity for better things.' 

All this is, of course, more or less commonplace, as are also, 
perhaps, the details which are to follow ; yet there is about 
the persons and things described a certain distinctive element 
due to distinctive features in the political and social life which 
formed a background for them. The pioneer school of Upper 
Canada resembled, it is true, its counterpart in Indiana, Illinois 
and Kentucky ; yet it diflfered as well. 

It would be difficult to find a schoolhouse more primitive than 
was the one used by the first public school in the County of 
Victoria. " The schoolhouse, or building used as such, was an 
old log shanty about twenty by twelve feet, covered with elm 
bark, a flat roof — it had neither window, floor or fireplace or 
stove, consequently it could be used only in summer."^ 

The " home-made " character of one of the early schools in 
Bayham Township extended even to the hinges and the latch 

' Lizars, In the Days of the Canada Company, p. 437. 

J Bourinot, The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People, pp. 10, 11. 

' From the letter of a superannuated school teacher, given in Doc. Hist., Vol. IV, p. 147. 



70 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

on the door. " The walls were built of logs dovetailed at the 
corners, the chinks being filled in with mud. Logs formed 
the rafters, and large pine slabs were used instead of shingles. 
These latter were weighed down by logs firmly tied to the build- 
ing by willow withes. Inside, wooden pins were driven part way 
into the wall and on these pine planks were laid. These planks 
extended nearly around the building and formed the desks. Half 
of a bass-wood log, the flat side dressed smooth, was supported 
by four heavy wooden legs and formed the bench. The door 
had wooden hinges and a wooden latch. A large fireplace sup- 
plied warmth in cold weather."^ 

Of the uncomfortable and unsanitary condition of these early 
schoolhouses, no special evidence is perhaps necessary, yet the 
comment of a writer in the Kingston Gazette in 1818 is worth 
quoting both because of its vividness and because of its humor. 
"One might suppose," this gentleman remarks, " from the shat- 
tered condition and ill-accommodation of many schoolhouses, 
that they were erected as pounds to confine unruly boys and 
punish them by freezing them and smoking them, so that the 
master can do little more than regulate the ceremonies of the 
hearth." 

There was no one distinct type of the early schoolmaster, rather, 
there were several. There was first, the old countryman of 
decayed fortunes. A specimen of this class is thus described 
in a letter which Dr. Hodgins includes in his Documentary 
History. " He was an Irishman . . . and a graduate of 
Trinity College, Dublin. He drifted to Emily (Township) where 
he took up the land granted to him as a discharged soldier, but, 
being not used to manual labor, he did not stay long on the land. 
The settlers, being desirous of getting their children as much 
of an education as the resources of the country and their own 
limited means could aflford, held a meeting and concluded to 

endeavor to make an arrangement with Mr. H to open a 

school. The result was that he was engaged to teach while 
the weather kept fine at the rate of eight dollars per month."^ 
This same poor fellow, we are told, later, was found dead in 
the roadway a few months afterwards, as the result of an over- 



1 From " Prize Sketches of Schools in the County of Elgin," published in the St. Thomas 
Journal and reprinted in Doc. Hist., pp. 140-144. 

2 Letter from a superannuated school teacher, Doc. Hist., IV, p. 147. 



Common School — Its Essential Characteristics. 71 

indulgence in the potent whiskey of the time. Then there was 
the ambitious young man, who, perhaps, had had the advantage 
of one or more winters at one of the district grammar schools. 
Like the college or academy student of New England during 
this same period, he taught school as a means of livelihood while 
preparing for a more lucrative or a more honorable calling, 
such as that of the law, of medicine or of the ministry. 

Again, there were some men, though how many it is impossible 
to tell, who continued in the profession and even in the same 
school for a considerable number of years and who, both as 
regards scholarship and character, were worthy of a larger 
remuneration and more favorable conditions of work than the 
times afforded. These men were to be found more particularly 
in the older and more thickly settled districts where the school 
as an institution had more chance to flourish and where the 
work of the master was more highly regarded and hence better 
rewarded than in the newer portions of the Province. 

A fourth, and if contemporary accounts are to be accepted, a 
very numerous class was that of the schoolmaster adventurer 
of the type of Ichabod Crane and own brother to the hedge- 
schoolmaster of the South before the war. These wanderers 
were very frequently Americans and were none the more highly 
regarded because of that fact. It must be remembered that we 
are dealing with the period immediately following the War of 
1812-1815, and that to the loyal Briton of that day the name 
"American " had as sinister a meaning as the name " Yankee " 
had to the Virginian or the Georgian of the decade before the 
Civil War. All this was narrow-minded of course and yet, with 
the memory of an American invasion fresh in their minds and 
with many of the United Empire Loyalists still alive, it was 
most natural. 

We are informed that as early as 1799 it had been the policy 
of the government " to exclude schoolmasters from the States 
lest they should instill Republicanism into the tender minds of 
the youth of the Province."^ The Reverend John Cosens Ogden, 
an American clergyman who visited the Province in 1809, records 
the following as his impressions : " Dreading revolutions, they 
(the inhabitants) are cautious in receiving Republicans from the 

iSmith, A Geographical Account of the British Possessions in North America. 



72 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

States and wish to encourage husbandmen and laborers only. 
Clergymen, lawyers, physicians and schoolmasters from the 
States are not the first characters which would be fostered. Many 
congregations would be formed and schools opened if the policy 
in this particular had been different."^ 

Mr. Robert Gourlay in his Statistical Account of Upper 
Canada asserts that nearly four-fifths of the settlers in Upper 
Canada in 1818 had come from the United States. After making 
all due allowance for the Loyalist immigration immediately sub- 
sequent to the Revolutionary War, it is evident that a great 
many of these settlers must have come into the Province since 
1800. Mr. Gourlay himself refers to the loyalty of these people 
to Great Britain during the struggle of 1812-1815. It was doubt- 
less the existence in the Province of such a large number of 
American-born citizens that gave the itinerant American teacher 
his opportunity, if it did not create an active demand for him. 
There is abundant evidence that he at least was there and that 
his presence was looked upon by many with great disfavor. The 
criticisms ofifered upon his activity were generally similar in 
character to the following which is a quotation from a Statistical 
Account of Upper Canada published in 1836. 

It is really melancholy to traverse the Province and go into many of 
the Common Schools; you will find a herd of children instructed by some 
anti-British adventurer, instilling into their young and tender minds senti- 
ments hostile to the Parent State; false accounts of the late war of 1812, 
in which Great Britain was engaged with the United States ; Geography, 
setting forth New York, Philadelphia, Boston, etc., as the largest and 
finest cities in the world ; historical reading books describing the Ameri- 
can population as the most free and enlightened imder Heaven ; insisting 
on the superiority of their laws and institutions to those of all the world ; 
in defiance of the mob supremacy daily witnessed and lamented; and 
American Spelling Books, Dictionaries and Grammars, teaching them an 
anti-British dialect and idiom although living in a Province and being 
subjects of the British Crown.^ 

Practically all the writers on the common schools of the period, 
and this includes the authors of the various reports of Select 
Committees of the House of Assembly on Education, agree 
in several important respects, which may be mentioned here by 
way of summarizing this especial phase of our subject : 



1 A Tour through Upper and Lower Canada, By a Citizen of the United States, p. 55. 

2 Dr. Thomas Rolph, A Statistical Account of Upper Canada. 



Common School — Its Essential Characteristics. 73 

(i) They unite in calling attention to the extremely tran- 
sitory character of the average teacher. " In every township," 
says Mr. Flindall, in an article from which we have already 
quoted, "a teacher of twelve months' standing is a prodigy; 
one of as many weeks the most common."^ A resolution intro- 
duced into the House of Assembly in 183 1 speaks of common 
school teaching as having become " a mere matter of convenience 
to transitory persons or common idlers who often stay but for 
one season and leave the schools vacant till they accommodate 
some other like person."^ 

(2) They are unanimous in emphasizing the total unfitness, 
both moral and intellectual, of a great many of the common 
school teachers. Stronger language could scarcely be used than 
is to be found in reports of the Select Committees just referred 
to and in resolutions which from time to time received the 
serious attention of the House of Assembly. One such resolu- 
tion, for example, speaks of "the youth of the Province being 
left without due cultivation or, what is still worse, frequently 
with vulgar, low-bred, vicious and intemperate examples before 
them in the person of their monitors. "^ 

(3) They attribute the low state of the common schools in 
the main to the meagreness of the Government appropriations. 
For example, a Select Committee of the House of Assembly in 
1833 reports that "these District Common Schools have de- 
teriorated since the reduction of the annual appropriation to 
their support. ... In some of the districts not more than 
four or five pounds can justly be given to any one teacher and, 
should there be no remedy next year, the grant will admit of 
only two or three pounds each which would be something like 
a mockery."" A Parliamentary Commission which in 1839 made 
a careful investigation and an exhaustive report voices the same 
sentiment in language diflfering little from the foregoing. They 
account for the " want either of literary or moral qualifications 
in the common school teachers " as follows : " The cause of the 
unfitness your committee believe to be the inadequate remunera- 
tion which is held out to those who would embrace this occupa- 

. '^l-ssav on Education in Upper Canada published in Kingston Gazette, 1818. Reprinted 

in Doc. Htst.. Vol. I, pp. 133-135. 

» Proceedings of House of Assembly for 1831. In Doc. Hirf., Vol II p 51 

I Educational Proceedings of House of Assembly for 183 1, Doc. Hist. Vol II p "ii 

* Report of Committee, Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 109. • t^- 3 ■ 



74 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

tion. In this country, the wages of the working classes are so 
high that few undertake the office of schoolmaster except those 
who are unable to do anything else."^ 

The common school curricula of the day were, of course, in 
keeping with the schoolhouses in which they were taught and 
with the teachers who administered them. Certainly nothing 
very extensive could be expected of the first teacher in School 
Section No. 8, Malahide Township, " who only knew how to read 
and write a little."^ Of a somewhat similar character must have 
been those who qualified for their positions under the Act of 
1824, one of whose clauses, as we have seen, stipulated that, in 
the examination of teachers, " due regard should be had at all 
times to the degree of education wanting or to the branches 
necessary to be taught in the township, village or place in which 
such teacher hath undertaken or is about to teach, a common 
school."^ 

Very illuminating indeed, in this connection, is the following 
description of the practices in vogue in the first common schools 
of what is now one of the most prosperous and enlightened rural 
communities in the Province. After giving a formidable list of 
studies " which are the terror of the luckless child of to-day, 
who has to carry enough of books to make them [sic] tired 
physically as well as mentally," the writer of the sketch in ques- 
tion remarks, " On starting to school, the child of by-gone days 
simply had to carry a ' shingle ' on which his letters were printed. 
This he would study until tired when he would quietly raise [sic] 
up, place his book on the seat and sit down. There being no 
desks to hold the books, this style of book was very handy as 
there was no danger of the leaves being torn out." 

"After the letters were thoroughly learned, the first step in 
advance was promotion to the class which was engaged in the 
study of the New Testament, the Bible being then the standard 
text-book for reading. The scholars were thoroughly drilled 
in the teachings of Bible truths for a long time after learning 
to read fairly well. Not until the scholar could read and spell 
well was he allowed to begin to write and a good deal of pains 
was taken to teach the scholar to write well. The pens used 

'From Report of Commission, Doc. Hist., Vol. Ill, pp. 243-283. The extract given 
occurs on p. 249. 

2From "Prize Sketches of Schools in Elgin County" — Doc. Hist., Vol. IV, p. 140. 
'Sec. VI of Act. 



Common School — Its Essential Characteristics. 



75 



were made of goose quills, the ink also was made of soft maple 
bark, oak galls or something of that nature. To buy ink was 
impossible at that time and steel pens had not come into general 
use. The copy-books were often made of wrapping paper, fools- 
cap paper was very scarce and expensive. A little arithmetic 
was also taught and this in the majority of cases was the total 
amount of education which the pupils had the chance to receive. 
More advanced pupils were taught a little grammar, geography 
and history."^ 

The following daily program^ of the York common school 
in 1821 is of value in this connection as showing: (i) A purely 
formal course of study consisting of reading, writing, spelling, 
parsing, analyzing, arithmetic tables, etc.; (2) the use of the 
New Testament as a text-book, apparently for purposes of " the 
letter" rather than for those of "the spirit;" (3) the require- 
ment of weekly recitations in the Church Catechism ; (4) the 
segregation of boys and girls in the two lower classes: 

All the classes (at least four lessons a day) read, spell and parse. 

Examinations are held every evening in Grammar, Spelling and Arith- 
metic Tables. The Church Catechism is heard once a week. The follow- 
ing is the daily order of studies : 



First Class 

of 

Boys. 



First Class 

of 

Girls. 



Second Class 

of 

Boys. 



Second Class 

of 

Girls. 



Morning. 

Grammar Lessons, Ex- 
ercises on Grammar, 

Reading, Spelling and 
Parsing; Writing or 
Arithmetic. 

Grammar "Tasks," 
Definitions, Correc- 
tion of Erroneous 
Syntax ; Reading 
Parsing and Spelling ; 
Writing or Arithme- 
tic. 

Grammar, Parsing; 
Etymology, Reading, 
Spelling and Writ- 
ing. 

Grammar Lessons ; 

Definitions, Reading, 
Spelling and Pars- 
ing; Writing. 



Books Used. 
Murray's English Reader; 
Murray's Grammar and 
Exercises ; Gray and 
Walkinghame's Arithme- 
tic. 

Enfield's Speaker; Murray's 
Grammar and Exercises; 
Carpenter's Scholar's As- 
sistant; Walkinghame's 
Arithmetic. 



New Testament, Murray's 
Grammar and Spelling 
Book. 



Barrie's Reader, Murray's 
Grammar; Carpenter's 
Assistant; Scott's Les- 
sons; Writing. 



Woe. Hist., Vol. I, p. 166, Reprint of articles from the St. Thomas Journal on 
and Dominies, in the Township of Aldborough." 
^Given in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 182. 



' Schools 



76 



Public Education in Upper Canada. 



Third and Fourth 
Class of 
Children. 



First Class 

of 

Boys. 

First Class 
of 
Girls. 

Second Class 

of 

Boys. 

Second Class 

of 

Girls. 

Third and Fourth 
Classes. 



Spelling, Reading An- 
alyzing, Orthogra- 
phy. 

Afternoon. 

Reading, Spelling and 
Parsing; Writing or 
Arithmetic. 

Reading, Spelling and 
Parsing, Writing and 
Arithmetic. 



Testament and 
Spelling Book. 



Murray's 



Spelling, 
and Writ- 



Reading, 
Parsing 
ing. 

Reading, Spelling, 

Parsing and Writing. 

Same as in the morning. 



Same as in the morning. 



Same as in the morning. 



Same as in the mornings 



Same as in the morning.. 



. A very noticeable feature of the social life of the period was 
the scarcity of books, Mr. Edward Allen Talbot, an educated 
Englishman who came to the Province in 1818, asserts in one 
of a series of letters to the Old Country, subsequently collected 
and published in book form, that during five years' residence 
in Upper Canada he saw only two persons with books in their 
hands and that one of these cases was that of a man who was 
consulting a medical work for a disease with which he was 
afflicted. " Indeed," Mr. Talbot goes on to say, " the scarcity 
of books in the country parts of Canada is nearly as great as 
that of pineapples on the summit of Snowdon."^ This scarcity, 
on account of the poverty of many of the settlers and on account 
also of the absence of suitable depots for distribution, extended 
even to school books. It was this condition of affairs doubtless 
which led to the provision of the Act of 1816 authorizing Dis- 
trict Boards of Education to expend certain amounts in the 
purchase of text-books and to distribute those books as cir- 
cumstances might demand. This permissive legislation seems 
to have availed little however, since throughout the entire period 
under consideration the lack of satisfactory text-books was a 
fruitful source of complaint. 

In the first school established at Richmond Hill in the Home 
District (in 1820) there was evidently not only a lacking of 

* From Letter XXX of the series, quoted in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 194-196. 



Common School — Its Essential Characteristics. 77 

books but also a lack of uniformity in what few there were. 
Of this school we are told : " The books, all sorts and sizes — ^home 
supplies — were few and far between and were shoved along the 
class until each scholar got his share of the lesson. The first 
passable supply of books of instruction that arrived in our vil- 
lage was imported from the British and Foreign Bible Society 
in England."^ 

Most of the books used in the common schools at this time 
seem to have been American publications, works whose anti- 
British character has been referred to in another connection. 
Notwithstanding the fact that the dangers involved in such a 
practice were recognized at least as early as 1822,^ for more 
than twenty years no adequate effort was made to provide school 
books more acceptable from the patriotic standpoint. The Parlia- 
mentary Commission of 1839 was able to report as follows: 
■" Your commission regret to find that editions published in the 
United States are much used throughout the Province ; tinctured 
as they are by principles which, however fit for dissemination 
tinder the form of Government which exists there, cannot be 
inculcated here without evil results."-^ In fact it was not till 
1850 that a system of text-books was adopted and an enactment 
made forbidding the use of " any foreign book in the English 
branches in any Common or Model School without the express 
permission of the Council of Public Instruction."* It may be 
remarked here that by both the Acts of 1843 and 1850 American 
teachers were excluded from the schools until they had taken 
the oath of naturalization. 

Some feeble attempts were, however, apparently made to meet 
the deficiency in the matter of text-books. In the minutes of 
the General Board of Education for May 6th, 1828, there is 
the following entry : 

The Board met this day and after discussing the matter it was: 
Resolved that the Mayor's English Spelling Book, reprinted at Kingston 
Tiy Mr. James McFarlane, is a Book which it would be desirable to intro- 
duce into the Common Schools throughout this Province; and that ih 
order to do so with the least expense, and so as to afford the necessary 
number of copies, it is advisable to have the work printed on paste-board 
sheets, containing a page on each side of the sheet. 

iProm a private letter printed in Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. iS4- . ,_ , .,.,^ 

2See letter of Lt. Gov. Sir Peregrine Maitland to Earl Bathurst in Doc. Htst., Vol. Ill, p. 3- 
^Report of Pari. Com. on Ed., 1830, Doc. Hist., Vol. Ill, p. 250. 

<i3th Victoria, Chap. 48, Sec. 14, "An Act for the better establishment and mamtenance 
of Common Schools in Upper Canada. 



y8 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

The President was requested to ascertain what the charge will be of 
printing the work in this form and what would be the expense of 2000 
copies. It was also: Resolved that the expense be ascertained of print- 
ing, in the same form, such a small elementary treatise in arithmetic, as 
the President shall think eligible for the use of the Common Schools/ 

The unfortunate condition of the Province as regards school 
buildings, school teachers and school equipment, which has been 
described in the foregoing, was no doubt due at the outset to a 
widespread apathy in regard to public elementary education but 
for the continuance of these conditions throughout so long a 
period the small group of public officials in whose hands political 
power was concentrated, were mainly responsible. Their chief 
interest was elsewhere than in the common schools. They tried, 
as was said by one of the critics of the time, to construct their 
educational pyramid from the apex downward. Failure was, 
of course, inevitable but that failure made possible a reconstruc- 
tion along broader lines. That this reconstruction is still in 
progress, is evident to any careful student of educational con- 
ditions in the Province of Ontario at the present time. 

Woe. Hist.. Vol. Ill, p. 3. 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Religious Factor in Public Education— The Grammar 
AND THE Common Schools. 

A study of the present educational crisis in England is exceed- 
ingly instructive to a student of the relationships which have 
existed historically between religion and the schools. It reveals 
the fact that there is in the politics of that country an influen- 
tial element who desire a continuance of the ascendancy of the 
Church of England in elementary education. It shows also that 
there is another and a much stronger element numerically, who, 
while they believe in religious instruction in the schools, yet 
desire to make full concession to the " non-conformist conscience." 
Just such a condition existed in Upper Canada in the early part 
of the nineteenth century. There was practically a unanimity 
of sentiment in favor of the union of religious with secular edu- 
cation but there were serious differences of opinion in regard 
to the specific form which the religious element was to assume. 

Naturally, those who upheld the theory that the Church of 
England was as definitely the Established Church of Upper Can- 
ada as it was of the mother country — notably Dr. (afterwards 
Bishop) Strachan — believed that public education in all its 
stages should be controlled by that Church. Just as naturally, 
the leaders in the other denominations, since they were opposed 
to the claims of the Church of England to a sole right to the 
enjoyment of the public land set apart for " a Protestant clergy," 
were equally emphatic in denying the right of that Church to 
supreme control of public education in the Province. What 
was sought by these men was a division of power and a form 
of religious instruction which did not carry on its surface the 
hall-mark of any particular creed. 

We have alluded already (in Chapter V) to the concessions 
made in the School Act of 1841 to the Roman Catholic Church. 
That religious body believed then, as it believes now, that formal 
instruction in religion should be given along with the instruction 
in the so-called secular branches of learning. It emphasized 
the serious dangers which threaten when the former is relegated 



8o Public Education in Upper Canada. 

to a separate period and to a separate class of instructors. As 
a result of this view and of the various legislative provisions 
which subsequently amplified and continued the privileges 
granted by the Act of 1841, formal instruction in Roman Catholic 
dogma occupies a prominent place in the curriculum of every 
separate school in the Province of Ontario at the present time. 
Of every separate school since, so far as the present writer is 
aware, at least, no Protestant denomination has availed itself of 
the privilege, which is granted to it by law, of establishing special 
public schools for the children of its communion. 

The Protestant denominations, throughout the whole history 
of the Province, while they have believed in religious instruc- 
tion in the public schools, have naturally had, because of important 
differences in creed, considerable difficulty in agreeing as to the 
exact matter of the instruction. Eventually, however, a sort 
of tacit agreement has been arrived at which confines the religious 
exercises of the school to the daily reading of the Bible, without 
comment by the teacher, and the daily recitation of a formal 
prayer. In the early grammar and common schools, however, 
the religious instruction given was much more direct and 
extensive. 

We have already referred to the attacks which were made on 
the grammar schools on the ground that they ministered solely 
to the needs of a wealthy and aristocratic class. Other and 
equally strenuous objections were made to them on the ground 
that they were in reality establishments of the Church of Eng- 
land. This objection received its most elaborate statement in 
a petition of the United Presbytery of Upper Canada to the 
House of Assembly in January, 1830.^ Certain paragraphs of 
this petition are of sufficient importance to be given in their 
entirety; they read as follows: 

From the manner in which your petitioners in their ministerial capacity, 
stand connected with a very large portion of His Majesty's subjects in 
this Province, they have the means of knowing and it is with deep regret 
they are compelled to say that the state of education is in general, in a 
deplorable condition. 

Although for many years, a liberal provision has been made for the 
education of the youth in this Province, the benevolent designs of the 
Legislature have failed in effecting the object they had in view. 



1 Copy of Petition, Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 298, 299. 



The Religious Factor in Public Education. 8i 

The appointment of trustees from one communion alone has occasioned 
a jealousy in the minds of the people and destroyed that confidence which 
should ever be placed in the public institutions of our countr}'. 

It might have been expected that, as all classes of the community and 
all denominations of Christians have to bear the expenses of these institu- 
tions, the interests of all would have been consulted, and that persons of 
intelligence in all denominations would have been allowed to participate 
in their superintendence. 

Your Petitioners with deep regret find that this is not the case; and 
that the Trustees of these institutions, which ought to be impartially man- 
aged for the benefit of all, have been almost exclusively appointed from 
one denomination of Christians, and consequently, your Petitioners and 
their congregations, as well as others in similar circumstances, have been 
deprived of that benefit which they had a right to expect would have 
arisen from them. 

Your Petitioners having numerous and large congregations under their 
superintendence, in which there are thousands of young people growing 
Tip in want of education, feel anxious that they should be provided with 
the means of instruction which would render them intelligent Christians 
and useful members of society. 

As these institutions are now managed, your Petitioners have no alter- 
native left but to apply to your Honorable House to afford them provision 
for other Schools to be placed under their superintendence, since they are 
not permitted to have any share in the appointment of Teachers or in 
the management of the District (Grammar) Schools now in existence. 

When the petition reached the Legislative Council, a com- 
mittee of that body was appointed to investigate the questions 
raised. The report of this committee^ contained a denial in 
toto of the charges made by the Presbytery. " For these alle- 
gations," so the report reads, " your committee, after the minutest 
enquiry, have discovered that there is not the slightest foun- 
dation, and they think it a matter much to be regretted, that 
a body of men acting under so respectable a name as ' The 
United Presbytery of Upper Canada ' should have advanced 
statements so entirely unsupported by facts." The Act of 1807 
which established the grammar schools, the committee says in 
substance, made " fitness, discretion, moral character, learning 
and capacity " the only necessary qualifications of the trustees 
to be appointed for these schools. The first District Boards of 
Trustees constituted under the act contained Roman Catholics 
and Presbyterians as well as Anglicans. In fact, in the Newcastle 

* In Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 307-310. 



82 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

District, only one of the trustees was a member of the Church 
of England. 

Even if the trustees were all Anglicans, the committee insists, 
such a fact would not make the schools sectarian if fitness and 
character were made the sole tests in the appointment of teach- 
ers. Then follows a list of the grammar school teachers from 
1807 till that time, with a statement of their church affiliations. 
The list as given includes twenty Anglican teachers and eighteen 
of other religious persuasions, sixteen of whom are mentioned 
as Presbyterians and " six in holy orders." A noticeable fact, 
but one to which the committee does not call attention, is that 
thirteen of the Anglican teachers are clergymen. 

The " argumentum ad hominem " is introduced in the asser- 
tion " that, on the occasion of a vacancy in the District of Johns- 
town, the Reverend William Smart, the very gentleman who in 
the capacity of moderator of the Presbyterians, signs the petition 
referred to us, might have obtained the situation of Teacher of 
the District School of that District, in which he then resided 
and still resides, and that he declined undertaking the charge." 

The Presbytery, in returning to the attack,^ called attention 
to the following facts: 

(i) That Legislative Council in its reply begs the question 
at issue. It confines itself to a description of the character of 
the original district trustees. It does not ofTer any evidence 
to show that the trustees of 1830 are not of the character alleged 
in the petition. 

(2) That though the Act of 1807 was unsectarian in nature, 
the grammar schools established under it have since come under 
sectarian control ; hence there is the greater cause for complaint. 

(3) Instead of refuting the charges of the Presbytery by 
giving the names of the present trustees with a statement of 
their church affiliations, the committee in question confines itself 
to compiling a list of grammar school masters and noticing that 
they have not all been of the Church of England. " But if this 
proves anything, it proves too much, for they have thus unin- 
tentionally given us additional proof of the exclusive system 
that has been pursued. For of those teachers that were not 
originally Episcopalians before they came under the influence of 



* In Report of a Committee, June i, 1830, given in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 315-316. 



The Religious Factor in Public Education. 83 

this exclusive system, it is a remarkable fact and one deserving 
of particular notice, that many have (to use their own words), 
' Since that taken orders in the Church of England.' " 

(4) Finally, it is a matter of personal knowledge with the 
members of the Presbytery " that the Trustees of the District 
Schools are almost exclusively appointed from one religious 
denomination, and that they are not aware that a single clergy- 
man of any denomination other than the Church of England 
has ever been appointed Trustee of the District (Grammar) 
Schools or that any clergyman of the Church of England resident 
in the town or village where the District (Grammar) School is 
established has been passed by." 

The controversy which has just been described illustrates the 
great difficulty of apportioning political authority among rival 
religious denominations in such a way that each shall feel that 
it has received its just share. It also shows that whether the 
grammar schools of the time were sectarian institutions or not 
they were at least regarded as such by a large proportion of the 
inhabitants of the Province. This feeling was intensified rather 
than diminished by the organization of Upper Canada College, 
the " superior grammar school " or " minor college " founded by 
Sir John Colborne in 1829. The principal and five of the masters 
of this school were clergymen of the Church of England and 
to that communion belonged also the Visitor and the Governing 
Board. 

The opposition of the Presbyterians and the Methodists ex- 
pressed itself in movements for the establishment of schools 
which should, in a measure at least, parallel the work of Upper 
Canada College. As early as 1830, the United Presbytery had 
considered the advisability of a " Literary Institution, embracing 
a course of appropriate studies for those who are assigned for 
the Christian ministry,"^ and of an appeal to the Provincial 
Government and to the general public for aid in the enterprise. 
In 1831, such a public appeal was made and funds were solicited 
in the United States as well as in Canada. 

Further action, looking towards the erection of buildings, was 
taken in 1832.^ The activity of the church in this connection 



'From minutes of meeting of Presbytery, Jan. ii, \%3°, q,noteAirom Brockville Recorder 
of Jan., 1830, in Doc. Hist.. Vol. I, p. ais. 

'Dr. Gregg, Hist, of Presbyterian Church in Canada, pp. 444-443. 



84 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

was, it would seem, for several years, intermittent, and hence 
without definite result. Finally, however, in 1840, a Presby- 
terian school known as Queen's College was established at 
Kingston. Since many of the circumstances attending the estab- 
lishment of this institution had a direct connection with the 
question of a Provincial university, any statement of them may 
properly be assigned to the following chapter. 

The protest of the Methodists against Executive partiality took 
definite shape much more quickly than did that of the Presby- 
terians. A conference held in 1830 resolved to proceed at once 
to the founding of '' a Seminary of Learning to be under the 
control of the Methodist Episcopal Church."^ The site of this 
Seminary was, shortly afterwards fixed at Cobourg. Its con- 
stitution, and in this respect it dififered radically from the school 
projected by the Presbyterians, made it " a purely Literary Insti- 
tution." " No system of Divinity shall be taught therein but all 
students shall be free to embrace and pursue any religious creed 
and attend any place of religious worship which their parents or 
guardians may direct."- 

This academy received a Royal Charter in May, 1836. and was 
formally opened on the eighteenth of the following month. A 
prospectus prepared in that year and printed for circulation in" 
England in connection with an appeal for funds mentions the 
following as "the specific objects of the institution." "(i) To 
educate upon terms equally moderate with similar institutions 
in the neighboring republic of the United States, and with strict 
attention to their morals, youth of Canada generally. (2) To 
educate for Common School Teachers free of charge, poor young 
men of Christian principles and character, and of promising 
talents, who have an ardent thirst for knowledge. (3) To edu- 
cate the most promising youth of the recently converted Indian 
tribes of Canada, as Teachers to their aboriginal countrymen."^ 

A patriotic reason for a generous support of the school existed 
in the fact that " For want of such an institution, upwards of 
sixty of the youth of Canada are now attending Seminaries of 
Learning, under a similar management in the United States, 
where nearly two hundred Canadian youth have been taught 



^Doc. Hist.. Vol. II, p. 2. 

2Copy of Charter. Doc. Hist., Vol. II, pp. 2f 

^Doc. Hist. Vol. II, p. 241. 



The Religious Factor in Public Education. 85 

the elementary branches of a professional education during the 
last eight years. There is good reason that nearly, if not quite, 
all the Canadian youth now being taught in the United States 
Seminaries of Learning will return to Canada as soon as this 
Institution shall have been brought into operation; besides the 
attendance of other Canadian youth, some of whom have been 
kept at home by their parents, for several months past, awaiting 
the opening of this Institution."^ 

The academy at the outset gave instruction in the purely ele- 
mentary subjects as well as in such higher branches as Latin, 
Greek, Hebrew, Mathematics and the Natural Sciences. So 
successful was the school and so skillfully were its affairs admin- 
istered that, in 1841, it was, by an act of the Legislature of the 
United Provinces, enlarged into a college, named from the then 
reigning queen of England, Victoria College. 

That the Upper Canada Academy was, in a sense, a protest 
against the exclusiveness which characterized Upper Canada 
College, as regards both its administration and its curriculum, 
is evident to any one who compares the two institutions in these 
particulars. That the founder of Upper Canada College, Sir 
John Colborne, saw in the projected Academy a rival to his 
own school, and appreciated the chief reasons for the activity 
of the Methodists in thus establishing a school of their own, 
appears quite clearly from a letter- which he sent, in 1831, to 
a Methodist Conference which was then in session. This letter 
was in acknowledgment of the receipt of certain memorials 
which the Conference had asked him to forward to His Majesty 
and of certain expressions of good will which had been addressed 
to him personally. In it, the Lieutenant-Governor censured the 
Conference and the church it represented in decidedly undiplo- 
matic language for their lack of sympathy with the political 
and educational policies of the administration. He informed 
them that " a very unfavorable impression had been made from 
one end of the Province to the other as regards an imported 
secular interference on the part of (their) preachers." He 
insinuated that the Methodist ministers took advantage " of the 
influence acquired by their sacred office to conduct the political 
concerns of the people committed to their care to be instructed 

^Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 241. 

'Copy of letter, Doc. Hist., Vol. II, pp. 11-12. 



86 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

only in the word of life." With a manifest reference to the 
plans for a Methodist Academy then under consideration, he 
remarked, " The System of Education which has produced the 
best and ablest men in the United Kingdom will not be abandoned 
here to suit the limited views of the leaders of societies who 
perhaps have neither experience or judgment to appreciate the 
value or advantages of a liberal education. A Seminary, I hope 
will not be styled exclusive that is open to everyone, merely 
because its classical masters are brought from our own univer- 
sities." 

The reply to this communication, undertaken on behalf of the 
Conference by the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, defended the 
Methodist ministers against the charges of unpatriotic behavior 
and pernicious political activity and asserted that the opposition 
to Upper Canada College was not because its masters were 
brought from the British universities but because the College 
itself " was established and placed under the control of one 
Church without even consulting the popular branch of the 
Colonial Legislature."^ 

When we turn to a consideration of common school education 
we find even a stronger instance of Executive arrogance and 
ecclesiastical domination than existed in the case of Upper Canada 
College. The instance in question is that of the Church of 
England " National " School which was established at York in 
1820 through the efforts of the Reverend Doctor Strachan. This 
school was supported for over twenty years partly from the 
university endowment and partly from the Provincial revenues. 
A complete system of " National " schools, which was eventually 
to absorb the whole work of elementary instruction in the 
Province, was planned at this time but only one other school 
of the class — that at Peterborough — was actually put into opera- 
tion. The only record that can be found of this latter school, 
so far as the present writer is aware, consists in a few scattered 
references in the Legislative documents of the time to an annual 
grant of some sixty pounds to its support. 

A definite though rather tardy attempt was made in 1822 
to secure the Royal approval of the plan which has just been 
outlined. In 1822, the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Peregrine Mait- 



■; 'From portion of letter quoted in Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 12. 



The Religious Factor in Public Education. 87 

land, submitted to the Colonial Secretary, Earl Bathurst, a scheme 
of popular elementary education involving " an introductory 
school on the National plan in each town of a certain size." 
The number of these schools was to be increased " as the cir- 
cumstances of the Province may require and the means allow."^ 
This application of the Lieutenant-Governor, was of course in 
reality a request for the Royal endorsement of a policy which 
had been in operation — in part at least — for some two years. 

The Colonial Secretary, in a reply dated October 12th, 1823, 
conveyed His Majesty's consent to an appropriation of " a por- 
tion of the Reserves set apart for the establishment of a uni- 
versity, for the support of Schools on the National plan of 
Education."^ 

The reader is doubtless acquainted with the educational move- 
ment which took place in England in the early part of the nine- 
teenth century and which is associated with the names of Dr. 
Andrew Bell and Mr. Joseph Lancaster. He has, doubtless, 
also some knowledge of the chief feature of the two " systems " — 
the employment of the more advanced pupils in the school as 
teachers of the less advanced, and the consequent material 
cheapening of the cost of elementary instruction. 

Both the Bell and the Lancaster systems found their way 
into Upper Canada. The former was employed as has been 
mentioned. The latter was adopted in 181 5 by an organization 
known as " The Midland District School Society." Though the 
work of this society was not without educational significance, 
it was not in any way under public control ; neither did it 
receive public aid, hence the Lancasterian schools which it con- 
ducted do not properly fall within the province of this study. 

The local circumstances attending the establishment of the 
Central National School at York are rather complicated but the 
essential facts appear to be as follows : In 1820 a Mr. Thomas 
Appleton was the teacher of the common school at York and 
was regarded by the trustees and by the community at large as 
highly successful in his work. When by the School Act of 
that year, the annual legislative grant for schools was reduced 
from £6,000 to £2,500, the Board of Education for the Home 
District instead of making a proportionate reduction in the 

'Quoted in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 179. 
'Ibid. 



88 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

allowance to each school within its jurisdiction, arbitrarily dis- 
continued the grant to Mr. Appleton. The chairman of the Dis- 
trict Board, Dr. Strachan, had, it appears, asked some time 
before for the use of the school building for a school on the 
" National " pattern to be placed in charge of a teacher to be 
sent out by the Central National School at London. This request 
had been refused by the trustees on the ground that to grant it 
would involve, on their part, a breach of faith with Mr. Apple- 
ton. When, a few month afterwards, the Provincial grant was 
cut off from the school, it was felt both by Mr. Appleton and 
the trustees to be an act of retaliation on the part of Dr. Strachan 
and the other members of the District Board of Education. These 
gentlemen of course justified their action on grounds of economy. 
A " National " school being projected for York, there was no 
further need of the public common school and the money with- 
held from Mr. Appleton could very advantageously be used in 
increasing the grants to the other common schools of the District. 

A further stage in the controversy was reached when, in Sep- 
tember, 1820, by the direction of the Lieutenant-Governor, the 
school building, then vacant, was appropriated for the purposes 
of a " National " school and a Mr. Joseph Spragge installed 
as teacher. The arbitrary nature of this proceeding appears in 
all the stronger light when one remembers that the building in 
question was erected with funds obtained by popular subscrip- 
tion for the express purpose of carrying into effect the pro- 
visions of the Common School Act of 1816. 

Of the character of the " National " plan of education as exem- 
plified in his school, Mr. Spragge later testified before a com- 
mittee of the House of Assembly that he used the Rev. Dr. 
Bell's system which he considered as prior in invention to Mr. 
Lancaster's and that the principal difference between the two 
systems was that " Dr. Bell's system is in accordance with the 
Established Church and in my school I use the Church Cate- 
chism and a Collect at morning and evening prayer. But the 
children are not taught the Church Catechism when their parents 
object to it."^ 

In the meantime, Mr. Appleton continued teaching at York, 
though without any support other than the fees of his pupils. 

'Evidence before Committee of the House of Assembly 182S, in Doc. Hist., Vol. I 
p. 252. 



The Religions Factor in Public Education. 89 

He carried a claim for redress first to the District Board of 
Education and later to the Lieutenant-Governor. From these 
quarters he received no encouragement. Finally, in 1828, he 
addressed a petition to the House of Assembly on the matter. 
The House appointed a committee to look into the case. This 
committee called several witnesses, among them Mr. Appleton 
himself, Mr. Spragge and the three common school trustees 
who had contracted for Mr. Appleton's services in 1820. The 
report which was the outcome of the investigations of this com- 
mittee recognized the justice of Mr. Appleton's claim and 
condemned in unequivocal terms the action of the Executive 
and the District Board of Education. The more significant 
passages of the Report are as follows : 

Your Committee . . . report it, as a matter of regret, that tried 
and faithful teachers who had devoted themselves to the occupation for 
years, and were looking forward to it as the labor of their lives, should 
be superseded by the erection of what is termed a " National " school, 
which is neither needed by the state of the country, nor the extent of the 
population. 

This " National School " it appears has been supported out of the 
revenues of the Province without the knowledge and consent of Parliament. 

Mr. Spragg, as Teacher of the " Central School " receives £250 per 
annum, which, with the contingent and other expenses advanced out of 
the revenues of the Province, amounts to about £300, and the average 
number of scholars, every year, from its institution to the present time, 
has been sixty-three. 

Upon examining the progress made by some of the children in this 
Central National School and comparing it with the progress made by 
others m the Common Schools, in a far shorter time, your Committee 
find that the latter have made a far greater proficiency. 

If the sum appropriated to the " Central School " were distributed as 
an encouragement to schools in the interior of the country, where money 
is scarce, and the patronage both needed and deserved, it would be most 
beneficially felt in every township in the Home District and in every 
other District in the Province also. 

The " National School " is founded upon the Rev. Dr. Bell's system and 
is professedly adherent to the Church of England — and, therefore, ought 
not to be supported by the revenues of a country struggling against 
ecclesiastical exclusion (exclusiveness?).i 

It does indeed seem a most arbitrary and extravagant piece 
of behavior that a common school conducted in a building erected 
by popular subscription should be discontinued on the ground 
of the insufficiency of the government grant, and that in its place 

^Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 246-247. 



9© Public Education in Upper Canada. 

a school of sectarian character should be established by executive 
mandate and maintained at an expense nearly ten times as great 
as that of the one which it supplanted. 

The "Appleton case," as it was known, dragged along till 1835. 
In that year the Select Committee of the House of Assembly 
on Grievances recommended " that £85, 4s. be paid to Mr. Thomas 
Appleton, Teacher of the Common School of this place in the 
years 1822, 1823, 1824, 1825, 1826 and 1827, for Public Moneys 
due to him and withheld by the Board of Education and for 
the interest thereon accruing."^ 

In the following year Mr. Appleton's claim was again con- 
sidered in Committee but nothing apparently came of it. The 
responsibility for the non-payment of the claim, rested, it would 
seem, with the Executive rather than with the House of Assembly. 

The Central National School at York, with Mr. Spragge still 
at its head, continued into the new regime. As late as 1843 
it appears in a Report to the Legislative Assembly by the Pro- 
vincial Secretary of the educational institutions receiving grants 
of public money. In 1844, however, because of the organization 
of a city school system in York (then Toronto), it was dis- 
continued by an order of the Governor-General in Council. At 
that time, according to a representation made by Mr. Spragge 
there were three hundred and ninety-six children in attendance 
at the school. 

The plan of Sir Peregrine Maitland and the General Board 
of Education at the outset seems to have been to make the 
school at York a training-centre, similar to its prototype in 
London, where teachers should be prepared for taking charge 
of the projected National schools throughout the Province. 
This expectation was, however, never realized, doubtless because 
of the hostile public sentiment which found expression in the 
House of Assembly in the Report on the Appleton Case and in 
other reports to which reference has been made in preceding 
chapters. The Appleton Case was, however, but one phase of a 
struggle against ecclesiastical denomination. Another and still 
more important phase was the agitation which was carried on 
for many years against the projected establishment of a Pro- 
vincial University under Church control. This agitation will 
form the chief subject of the following chapter. 

^Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 170. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Religious Factor in Public Education — The Pro- 
vincial University. 

An account has already been given of the various events 
from 1797 onward connected with the provision of a land 
endowment for a Provincial University in Upper Canada. Men- 
tion has also been made of the fact that until 1843 the University 
as a body of teachers and students did not exist. There remains 
yet to be described the various university charters and acts and 
the controversies which arose because of the effort of one por- 
tion of the community to secure for the University a distinctly 
ecclesiastical and Anglican character and the equally persistent 
endeavor of another element to purge it of all sectarian taint. 

The foremost champion of the ecclesiastical party was, of 
course, the Reverend Dr. Strachan. His views were in the main 
endorsed and his efforts warmly seconded by the different Lieu- 
tenant-Governors of the Province. On his side were ranged 
also the members of the Legislative Council, who represented, 
as has been shown, the conservative and artistocratic element 
in the population. The opposite party, so far as its religious 
complexion was concerned, was made up of the different dis- 
senting denominations. Its views found expression in the de- 
liberations and resolutions of the House of Assembly. In several 
instances the House undertook to embody these views in bills; 
these, while they manifestly expressed the popular will, failed 
of course, to secure the approval of the Upper House. Such 
a condition of affairs naturally led to recriminations between 
the two legislative bodies and to appeals on the part of the 
House of Assembly to the Royal authority as represented in the 
Colonial Office. All these facts will appear from the detailed 
descriptions which follow. 

Although the need of a university had been agitated inter- 
mittently since 1800, it was not till 1826 that the financial 
prospects of the institution were felt to be such as to warrant 
the application for a Royal Charter. In April of that year, the 
Reverend Dr. Strachan arrived in England charged with the 
triple mission of effecting an exchange of the unproductive uni- 



92 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

versity lands for the more valuable Crown Reserves, of arousing 
British sympathy and obtaining private aid for the university and 
of securing the charter in question. 

During the early part of his stay in England, Dr. Strachan 
drew up "An Appeal to the Friends of Religion and Literature 
in behalf of the University in Upper Canada." In this " appeal " 
he reviewed the existing school system of the Province, empha- 
sized the need of a school of a higher order which should 
provide instruction in Law, Medicine and Divinity and called 
attention to the dangers which threatened from the sending of 
many Canadian youth to colleges in the United States. He 
laid especial stress on the needs of the Church. " What can 
twenty-four clergymen do?" he asked, " scattered over a country 
of nearly six hundred miles in length? Can we be surprised 
that, under such circumstances, the religious benefits of a church 
establishment are unknown, and that sectaries of all descriptions 
have increased? And when it is further considered that the 
religious teachers of all other Protestant denominations, a very 
few respectable ministers of the Church of Scotland excepted, 
come from the republican states of America, where they gather 
their knowledge and form their sentiments, it is evident that, 
if the Imperial Government does not step forward with efficient 
help, the mass of the population will be gradually nurtured and 
instructed in hostility to our institutions, both civil and religious."^ 
In the concluding paragraph of the " Appeal " he returned to 
the same theme. " It is chiefly on religious grounds," he insists, 
" that this Appeal for the University of Upper Canada is made, 
which, while it offers its benefits to the population, will, for a 
century to come, from the peculiar circumstances of the coun- 
try be essentially a Missionary College, and the number of 
clergymen, which it will be called upon to furnish will be more 
than double what any other profession can require."- 

As a result of the efforts of Dr. Strachan, a Royal Charter 
was granted in 1827. The chief provisions of this charter were 
as follows: 

(i) The Anglican Bishop of the Diocese in which the College 
might be situated was to be the official visitor of the institution. 



Woe. Hist., Vol. I, p. 217. 
2 Ibid, p. 218. 



The Religions Factor in Public Education. 93 

(2) The Lieutenant-Governor for the time being should be 
the Chancellor. 

(3) The Archdeacon of York should be, ex-officio, the 
President. 

(4) The immediate government of the institution should be 
in the hands of a Council consisting of the Chancellor, the 
President and seven of the Professors. These latter were to 
be members of the Church of England and were required, before 
their admission to the Council, to subscribe to the Thirty-nine 
Articles. Prior to the opening of the University, others might 
be appointed in the place of the professors mentioned, provided 
that they also met the prescribed religious tests. 

(5) No religious tests should be required of any student 
except of those in Divinity. 

It is worthy of note in this connection that Dr. Strachan him- 
self doubted the wisdom of two of the restrictions imposed, viz., 
the one making the Archdeacon of York President by virtue of 
liis office, and the one requiring subscription of the Professors 
who should be admitted to the College Council to the Thirty- 
nine Articles. The Archbishop of Canterbury who was con- 
sulted in the matter had, however, no such scruples. On the 
contrary, he " doubted the propriety of assenting to an instru- 
ment so free and comprehensive in its provisions."^ 

As may easily be imagined, the University Charter of 1827 
gave serious offense to the House of Assembly. The session of 
that body which met in 1828 took up the matter in detail. A 
specific occasion for its activity was found at the outset in the 
" Petition of Mr. Bulkley Waters and 219 others of different 
denominations of Christians in the counties of Lennox and Ad- 
dington praying the House to enquire into the principle upon 
which an university is to be established in this Province so 
that no power to hold lands or other property be granted to 
nor any addition to the number of members composing the 
House of Assembly be made from, or out of, any ecclesiastical 
or literary body corporate at whose hands danger could, or 
might, be apprehended to the Constitution or to their religious 
liberties."^ Later in the session other petitions expressing the 

^Proc. at the Opening of Kings Coll., 1843, p. 39. 

^Ed. Proc. of House of Assembly for 1828, Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 234. 



94 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

same sentiments and signed by some six thousand persons in 
all, were presented to the House. 

These petitions were referred to a select committee and this 
committee in connection with its report to the House presented 
the draft of a petition to the King. This petition which was 
afterwards forwarded to His Majesty, asked for a cancellation 
of the charter on the ground that " it contains provisions which 
are calculated to render the institution subservient to the par- 
ticular interests of that Church (i. e. the Church of England) 
and to exclude from its offices and honours all who do not 
belong to it."^ 

" In consequence of these provisions," the petition further 
states, " its benefits will be confined to a favoured few, while 
others of Your Majesty's subjects, far more numerous, and 
equally loyal and deserving of Your Majesty's parental care 
and favour, will be shut out from a participation in them. Hav- 
ing a tendency to build up one particular church to the preju- 
dice of others, it (i. e. the University) will naturally be an 
object of jealousy and disgust. Its influence as a Seminary of 
Learning will, upon these accounts, be limited and partial."^ 

The House, in 1829, passed a series of resolutions which reiter- 
ated the chief facts contained in the Report and Petition of the 
preceding session. In the same year the Legislative Council 
rejected a resolution of one of its committees which expressed 
disapproval of the clause in the charter which made the Arch- 
deacon of York, ex-officio, the President of the College. At the 
same time, however, the Council pronounced in favor of the 
removal of the religious test for members of the College Council. 

The popular discontent with the charter received a fresh 
expression in 1830 in a petition to the Imperial Parliament 
from a number of the citizens of York County styling them- 
selves " The Friends of Religious Liberty." This petition was 
later circulated throughout the Province and received upwards 
of ten thousand signatures. As the name assumed by its chief 
promoters would signify, it expressed itself in favor of " an 
equality of privileges and immunities among all Christian de- 
nominations and a system of education under the control of the 
Provincial Legislature with Schools and Colleges in which there 

'Ed. Proc. of House of Assembly for 1828, in Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 242. 
Vbid. 



The Religious Factor in Public Education. 95 

should be no preference of sectarian tenets or interests, and whose 
portals and honours would be equally accessible to meritorious 
industry of every religious creed. "^ 

The agitation in the House of Assembly against the restrictive 
features of the charter was practically continuous up to 1837. 
In fact, in 1835, and again in 1836, the House went so far 
as to express its own views as to the organization and govern- 
ment of a university, in Charter Amendment bills. The Legis- 
lative Council in rejecting these bills expressed in quite emphatic 
language their opinion as to their character. A clause which 
provided " That no religious test or qualification whatever shall 
be required of any Chancellor, President, Professor, Tutor, Lec- 
turer, Scholar or other person being a candidate for any situ- 
ation or honour in the said College " is thus characterized, " By 
Section Twenty-six, Christianity appears proscribed with a viru- 
lence not unworthy of Diocletian, . . . There is not a 
College or University either in Europe or America or indeed 
in any part of the world (even not excepting the London Uni- 
versity, which has been forced to provide in some degree for 
religious instruction) without a religious character."^ 

During the period under consideration (1827-1837) the sym- 
pathies of the Imperial House of Commons were manifestly with 
the liberal attitude taken by their Canadian counterpart. In 
1828, a committee of that body, to whom had been referred 
the petition of the House of Assembly of that same year, gave 
expression to the following opinions: (i) "That with respect 
to the President, Professors and all others connected with the 
College, no religious tests should be required." (2) " That in 
the selection of Professors no rule should be followed and no 
other object sought than the nomination of the most learned and 
discreet person. . . . "^ 

The petition from Upper Canada had, it would appear, an 
effect upon the Colonial Office also. Sir John Colborne, who 
assumed office as Lieutenant-Governor towards the close of 
the year 1828, had apparently positive instructions to check the 
activities, then under way, looking towards the erection of college 
buildings, until the charter difficulty had been settled. At least, 



'Copy of Petition, Doc. Hist., Vol. I, p. 318. 

^Copy of Report of Committee, Doc. Hist., Vol. II, pp. 341-342. 

^Doc. Hist., Vol. I, pp. 254-255. 



96 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

the Council of King's College, in 1832, in alluding to a com- 
munication made by him to them shortly after his arrival in 
the Province, was able to remind him that he " declared that 
' one stone should not be put upon another ' until certain altera- 
tions in the charter had been made or proposed to the Legislature, 
and that as Chancellor, Your Excellency would utterly refuse to 
concur in any further measures of the Council under present 
circumstances."^ 

In 183 1, the Colonial Office went still ■ further and asked for 
the surrender of the College Charter and of all funds in the 
hands of the College Council, with the express understanding, 
however, that those funds, while in the hands of the Colonial 
Office, were not to be used for any purpose other than the 
original one. The reply of the Council to this request is thus 
referred to by its President, Dr. Strachan, in an address made 
some ten years later. 

In an able Report the College Council stated their reason for refusing 
compliance with this extraordinary request and that they did not think it 
right to concur in surrendering the charter of King's College or its endow- 
ment. The College Council further observed, that they did not feel nor 
profess to feel a sufficient assurance, that after they had consented to 
destroy a College founded by their Sovereign under as unrestricted and 
open a charter as had ever passed the Great Seal of England for a similar 
purpose, the different branches of the Legislature would be able to con- 
cur in establishing another that would equally secure to the inhabitants 
of the colony through successive generations, the possession of a seat of 
learning in which sound religious instruction should be dispensed and at 
which care should be taken to guard against those occasions of insta- 
bility, dissension and confusion, the foresight of which had led in our 
present state to the making an uniformity in religion in each university 
throughout the empire an indispensable feature of its constitution.^ 

The Colonial Secretary, not feeling justified in attempting 
coercion in the matter, contented himself with notifying the 
Provincial Legislature that when the two houses should agree 
upon an amended charter His Majesty would consider it favor- 
ably. It was not till 1837, however, that the two . legislative 
bodies were able to come to an agreement and even then, the 
Legislative Council passed the Charter Amendment bill of that 
year in a very unwilling spirit. It was only because of their 

^Address to Sir John Colborne, from the Council of King's College, March, 1832, given 
in Doc. Hist., Vol. Ill, pp. 32-37. 

^Address at the opening of King's College, 1843 — In Doc. Hist., Vol. II, p. 215.' 



The Religious Factor in Public Education. 97 

aversion to an indefinite postponement of the founding of the 
university that they consented to the bill at all. The following 
were the chief provisions of the measure in question : 

( 1 ) The Judges of King's Bench were made the official visitors 
of the institution. 

(2) The President was to be appointed by the King and did 
not need to be the incumbent of any ecclesiastical office. 

(3) The College Council was to be composed of the Chan- 
cellor and President of the University, the Speakers of the two 
Houses of Parliament, the Solicitor and Attorney-General for 
the time being, the five senior Professors and the Principal of 
Upper Canada College. 

(4) Upper Canada College was incorporated with King's Col- 
lege and placed under the control of the College Council. 

(5) A relative, though not an absolute freedom from religious 
tests was granted by the enactment that " It shall not be neces- 
sary that any member of the College Council ... or any 
professor to be at any time appointed shall be a member of 
the Church of England, or subscribe to any articles of religion 
other than a declaration that they believe in the authenticity and 
divine inspiration of the Old and New Testaments and in the 
doctrine of the Trinity."^ 

A point in connection with the amendment of the College 
Charter and one which occasioned considerable controversy was 
the matter of the Professorship of Theology. In a Missionary 
College of the Church of England such as that provided by 
the Charter of 1827, manifestly only one type of Theology was 
in place. The Anglican Professorship in Theology was left 
undisturbed by the Act of 1837. But the Church of Scotland 
was an established church in Great Britain and hence had some 
right to recognition as such in the colonies. The Law Officers 
of the Crown had already pronounced in favor of the claim 
of that church to a participation in the Clergy Reserves. It was 
natural then, that the leaders of that church in Upper Canada 
should go further and insist on their right to a Chair of Pres- 
byterian Theology in the Provincial University. In 1828, the 
Select Committee of the Imperial House of Commons of which 



^Tth William IV, Chap. XVI. 

7 



98 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

mention has already been made, suggested the estabHshment of 
such a professorship. In 1831, the United Presbytery of Upper 
Canada took up the matter in a resolution " That a respectful 
and immediate application be made to His Excellency the Lieu- 
tenant-Governor, Sir John Colborne, requesting him to procure 
for the United Presbytery of Upper Canada, the privilege of 
choosing a Professorship of Divinity in King's College to sit 
in the Council and in every respect to be on an equal footing 
with the other professors in the said college."^ 

The agitation thus begun continued for several years, though 
without any practical outcome. In 1837, the report of a Select 
Committee of the Legislative Council, which was afterwards 
adopted by the Council as a body, expressed itself as follows : 
" In order to reconcile all interests, your committee felt inclined 
to propose that a Theological Professor of the Church of Scot- 
land should be placed on the foundation, as suggested by the 
Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1828; but, on 
further examination, it was found that the College Council has 
full power to do this without special enactment. Your com- 
mittee therefore deemed it sufficient to recommend it to be done 
so soon after the College is put in operation as may be con- 
venient."^ This statement, it appears, was scarcely definite 
enough to satisfy the Presbyterians. The Honorable William 
Morris, their champion in the Legislative Council, in an open 
letter to the Reverend Dr. Strachan, expressed his fear that the 
fatal words " after " and " convenient " would " exclude during 
your (Dr. Strachan's) lifetime at least, the old-fashioned Geneva 
gown from the precincts of the College Avenue."^ 

The fears just expressed were apparently not without justi- 
fication for in the measures which it took to give effect to the 
Charter Amendment Act of 1837, the College Council made no 
use of the discretionary powers which, in the opinion of the 
committee of the Legislative Council, it possessed. The plan 
of organization submitted by Dr. Strachan, the President of the 
College, to quote the language of one of the Presbyterian leaders 
of the time, " treated with contumelious silence, at once the 
recommendations of the Parent Government and the oft-expressed 



*Dr Gregg, Hist, of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, p. 376. 

^Doc. Hist., Vol. IV, p. 90. 

^Letter quoted in Doc. Hist., Vol. Ill, p. 92. 



The Religious Factor in Public Education. 99 

wishes of the Colonists " (i. e. in favor of a Presbyterian Chair 
of Theology)."^ 

So doubtful were the Presbyterians of the intentions of the 
King's College Council that, in the latter part of the year 1837, 
a deputation (the Reverend Alexander Mathieson and the Rev- 
erend John Machar), representing Lower as well as Upper 
Canada, sought to enlist the aid of the Colonial Office in the 
securing of Presbyterian professorships of Theology both in 
King's College and in McGill College, Montreal. The Colonial 
Secretary, however, declined to interfere, on the ground that 
these were matters to be adjusted by the legislatures immediately 
concerned. 

The matter under controversy came up for review again in 
1839. In October of that year Sir George Arthur, the then 
Lieutenant-Governor, appointed a commission of which the Rev- 
erend Dr. McCaul (afterwards President of the University of 
Toronto) was chairman, " to examine into the past and present 
state of education throughout the Province and also to institute 
an enquiry with reference to the Constitution of King's College.'* 
This commission in its report expressed the conviction " that 
it would be wholly subversive of the order and well-being of 
an university to have within it chairs for the Professors of 
different denominations of religion." It recommended that^ 
instead, the theological instruction needed by the various dis- 
senting denominations should be given in theological seminaries 
of their own."^ 

This was the solution of the question which the Presbyterians 
were finally compelled by circumstances to adopt. In 1840, a 
Presbyterian institution, to be named the University of Kingston 
and to include a Theological Faculty of that denomination, was 
incorporated by an Act of the Provincial Legislature. The 
fifteenth section of this Act provided : " That so soon as the 
University of King's College, and the College thereby instituted, 
shall be in actual operation, it shall and may be lawful for the 
Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, or person administering the 
government of this Province, to authorize and direct the pay- 
ment from the Funds of the said University of King's College, 



'Letter of the Rev. Alexander Mathieson to Lord Glenelg, Colonial Secretary, dated 
Ausr. gth, 1837, in Doc. Hist., Vol. Ill, p. 287. 

^From Report of Commission, Doc. Hist., Vol. IV, p. 92. 



100 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

in aid of the College hereby instituted, of such yearly sum as 
to him shall seem just for the purpose of sustaining a Theolog- 
ical Professorship therein, and for the satisfaction of all claim 
on the part of the Church of Scotland for the institution of a 
Professorship of Divinity in the University of King's College, 
according to the faith and discipline of the Church of Scotland."^ 

Through an accident as peculiar as it was unforeseen the 
grant from the revenues of King's College provided for by 
the section just quoted, was never paid. In October, 1841, a 
Royal Charter was, upon petition, granted to the University 
of Kingston, and its name changed to Queen's College. This 
charter made no provision for a theological professorship and 
since it was held by the Law Officers of the Crown to have 
superseded wholly the Act of Incorporation of the preceding 
year, the authorities of King's College had a legal justification 
for withholding the grant in question. The strenuous protests 
of the injured parties did nothing, of course, to change the legal 
status of the case. 

However, the Church of England was not long to retain its 
favored position in the matter of theological instruction at King's 
College. The University Act of 1849, besides changing the name 
of the College to the University of Toronto, completely secularized 
the institution. It was specifically enacted " That no Religious 
Test or qualification, whatsoever, shall be required of, or ap- 
pointed for, any person admitted or matriculated, as a Member 
of such University, whether as a Scholar, Student, Fellow or 
otherwise, or of or for any person admitted to any Degree 
in any Art or Faculty, in the said University or of or for any 
person appointed to any Office, Professorship, Lectureship, 
Mastership, Tutorship or other place, or employment, whatso- 
ever, in the same, nor shall Religious Observances according 
to the forms of any particular Religious Denomination, be 
imposed upon the Members, or Officers, of the said University 
or any of them."- In addition to the foregoing, other provisions 
required that the Chancellor should be a layman, that no degrees 
in Divinity should be granted and that the professorship in that 
subject should be abolished. 



i.jrd Victoria, Chap. XXXV, "An act to establish a College by the Name and Style of 
the Univ. of KinRston." 

^I2th Victoria, Chap. LXXXII, Sec. 29. 



The Religious Factor in Public Education. loi 

Thus in a little over twenty years' time an institution which 
began, to use the words of its founder, as a " Missionary Col- 
lege " of the Church of England, was transformed into a purely 
state institution which could claim the support and patronage 
of all the citizens of the Province, irrespective of their religious 
belief. Of the agitations in the press and from the pulpit, of 
the discussions and resolutions of both lay and religious organiza- 
tions, of the parliamentary debates and enactments which con- 
tributed directly or indirectly to this transformation little more 
than a suggestion, however, has been given here. 



CHAPTER IX. (Supplementary.) 

Educational Tendencies in Ontario, i 846-1906. 

The progress of the Elementary Schools of Ontario during 
the last sixty years, and in a measure the progress of the schools 
of every rank, has been very closely identified with the efforts 
of one man, the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, Superintendent 
of Schools from 1846 till 1876. With the zeal of the missionary 
he combined the tireless energy of the captain of industry and 
the constructive genius of the statesman. In his general policy 
he displayed to a marked degree the ability of knowing " the 
season when to take occasion by the hand and make the bounds 
of freedom wider yet." 

Being defeated in 1850 in his efforts to make the public schools 
entirely free, he waited for over twenty years till public senti- 
ment, as expressed in the provincial legislature, should come to 
his way of thinking. His attitude and behavior during this 
interval is thus described by one who was his co-worker during 
the whole period of his incumbency of office. " The practical 
mind of Dr. Ryerson at once saw that the American idea of 
free schools was the true one. He moreover perceived that by 
giving his countrymen facilities for freely discussing the ques- 
tion among the rate payers once a year, they would educate 
themselves into the idea without any interference from the state. 
These facilities were provided in 1850 and for twenty years 
the question of free schools as against rate-bill schools (fees, 
etc.) was discussed every January in from three thousand to five 
thousand school sections until free schools became voluntarily 
the rule and rate-bill schools the exception."^ 

To this policy of public self-education, Dr. Ryerson added 
an active propaganda of his own. " I propose," he remarked 
in his report to the Government in 1846, " to visit and employ 
one or two days in school discourse and deliberation with the 
Superintendent, visitors, trustees and teachers in each of the 
several Districts of Upper Canada. I know of no means so 
effectual to remove prejudice, to create unanimity of views and 

'Prefatory note by Dr. J. G. Hodgins. In Ryerson Memorial Volume, p. IV. 



Educational Tendencies in Ontario, 1846-1906. 103 

feelings, and to excite a general interest in the course of public 
education.^ As has been already mentioned, Dr Ryerson's plans 
for the improvement of the elementary schools took permanent 
shape in the School Act of 1871. The chief provisions of this 
act were as follows : 

(i) The schools were made entirely free through the aboli- 
tion of the rate-bills and fees which had hitherto been allowed. 

(2) Every child of school age was required to be in attendance 
at school during at least four months of the year. 

(3) County inspectors of sufficient qualifications to satisfy 
the Council of Public Instruction, took the place of the local 
superintendents. These inspectors could be removed only for 
misconduct or inefficiency. 

(4) Provision was made for uniform examinations throughout 
the Province for promotion from the elementary school to the 
high school. 

For several years prior to 1876 Dr. Ryerson had sought to 
be relieved of the rather onerous duties of his office. One reason 
for this desire was a belief that the head of the public school 
system of the Province should be more closely in touch with 
the provincial legislature. To this end he suggested the ap- 
pointment of a Minister of Education who should be a member of 
the Provincial Legislature as well as of the Provincial Cabinet, 
and who should be the exponent of the educational policy of 
his party on the floor of the House. Upon Dr. Ryerson's retire- 
ment this change was effected and for nearly thirty years the 
affairs of the Education Department were in the hands of a 
Minister of Education who ranked with the other ministers of 
the Crown, and whose continuance in office depended upon the 
ability of his party to command a majority at the polls. Quite 
recently, however, an important change has been made in this 
connection. It was felt that it was too much to expect one 
man to combine the functions of the political leader with those 
of the educational expert. Consequently there has been created 
(or rather re-created) by a recent act of the provincial legis- 
lature the office of Superintendent of Education with duties 
partly administrative and partly advisory. This office is sub- 
ordinate to that of Minister of Education, and is expected to 



'^Ryerson Memorial Volume, p. 82. 



104 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

increase the efficiency of the latter official by bringing him into 
close and constant touch with the most recent educational ideas 
and practices. 

To adequately describe the progress that has taken place during 
the last fifty years within the elementary schools themselves 
would need several chapters each of considerable length. In the 
few paragraphs which can be devoted to the topic here, the 
best that can be done perhaps, is to indicate briefly what the 
schools were at the beginning and what they are at the end of 
the period mentioned, and to attempt to determine the chief 
forces which wrought the change. 

It would appear that in 1850 the schools in question differed 
little from those of twenty years before, and which have already 
been described in detail. Dr. J. H. Sangster, a teacher of the 
period, a graduate, and later the principal, of the Provincial 
Normal School, alludes to this fact in the following words : "Fifty 
years ago the youth of our fair Province were not overburdened 
with educational privileges. Upper Canada College and a few 
widely scattered Grammar Schools afforded moderate educa- 
tional opportunities to children of the favored class, but the 
common schools even in cities and towns were in most instances 
so mean in appearance and so wretched in character and appoint- 
ment, and so barren in useful results, that private schools of 
a scarcely higher grade were patronized by all save the miser- 
ably poor."^ 

In speaking of the text-books, Dr. Sangster informed his 
hearers that the " outfit of an entire school would not infre- 
quently consist of a few testaments, a Cough's or a Walking- 
hame's arithmetic, and a Mavor's spelling book. Haply, 
ff the school were above the ordinary run, or had any 
special claim of literary excellence, a chance copy of Fox's 
Book of Martyrs or the Spectator or of Baldwin's ' Pantheon ' 
might be found in the highest reading class, the single book 
passing in succession to each reader and the long words being 
skipped as being equally unpronounceable by both teacher and 
taught." 

As has been suggested, the energy of Dr. Ryerson and the 
leavening influences of the agencies he set at work — notably 

'From address at the Jubilee celebration of the Provincial Normal School, Toronto, 
included in the Ryerson Memorial Volume. 



Educational Tendencies in Ontario, 1846-1^06. 105 

the normal school — gradually effected a revolution. The log 
school house, with its unsanitary and uninviting interior, gave 
place to the more suitable building of frame, brick or stone, 
with equipment more in keeping with the needs of its inmates. 
The emigrant adventurer and the discharged soldier gave way 
to the young man, or more often to the young woman, who 
possessed in addition to youthful energy and approved moral 
character, the academic and professional training represented 
by a normal school course. Consequently the public school as 
an institution came to deserve and to enjoy the patronage of all 
classes in the community. 

The statesmanlike breadth which characterized Dr. Ryerson's 
administration of his office, and which slighted not the least 
of the details which might make for efficiency, still characterizes 
in the main the regulations by means of which the Education 
Department seeks to maintain a uniformly high standard through- 
out the schools of the Province. Not only are such matters as 
the certification and inspection of teachers and the general organ- 
ization of school programs provided for, but careful and minute 
instructions are given about such matters as the furniture and 
equipment of the school house, the text-books to be used, every- 
thing, it would appear, down to the location of the school pump. 
In the matter of examinations, and there are many of these, 
specific instructions are given as to the place and hours of 
examination in each subject, the precautions to be used by pre- 
siding examiners, even the number of marks to be deducted for 
each mis-spelled word in the papers examined. So complete 
indeed is the system, so carefully is every contingency provided 
for, that the observer, accustomed to the greater freedom and 
opportunity for local and individual initiative prevalent in most 
states of the Union, is apt to feel that its completeness is perhaps 
its greatest defect. 

The district grammar school of 1850 was apparently a very 
different institution from the high school of the present day. 
In the first place it taught, as did the grammar school of the 
earlier period, the elementary as well as the higher branches, 
thus, to quote the words of Dr. Ryerson, " impairing its own 
efficiency an d that of the neighboring common schools."^ In 

^Journal of Education, Vol. II, (1849), p. 168. 



io6 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

the second place it did not articulate with the higher institu- 
tions of learning. From the thirty to forty grammar schools 
existing in 1849 c>nly eight students matriculated in that year 
in the provincial university.^ 

The Grammar School Act of 1853 sought to remedy this and 
other defects. By it a grant of iioo was made to the senior 
grammar school in each county. The remainder of the income 
from the grammar school fund was to be divided among the 
various counties in proportion to their population. School build- 
ings were to be erected and maintained by a county rate. The 
course of study was to include the higher branches of an English 
and Commercial education, the elements of natural philosophy 
and mechanics, and the Latin and Greek languages so far as to 
prepare students for the University of Toronto. The program 
of studies and the general rules and regulations were to be 
prescribed by the Council of Public Instruction for Upper Canada 
and approved by the governor in council. It was a part of 
the duty of every senior master to make observations on the 
weather and to keep a meteorological journal. The necessary 
instruments for this work were to be provided at the expense 
of the municipality in which the school was situated.^ 

In 1871 the name " high school " was formally applied to 
those institutions which had theretofore been known as grammar 
schools, the course of study was enlarged to include French 
and German, and provision was made for the establishment of 
a superior class of high school to be known as collegiate insti- 
tutes. These latter schools were required to have at least four 
masters, each of whom was to have special qualifications as an 
instructor in the branches assigned to him. Subsequent legisla- 
tion has raised the standard of qualifications for high school 
teachers and has imposed certain minimum requirements as 
regards building and equipment. 

The high schools of the present day are kept closely in touch 
with the Education Department through the various departmental 
examinations conducted annually, and at which a large number 
of high school students are candidates for diplomas, and through 
the work of the high school inspectors who are salaried officers 
of the department and whose reports have a great deal to do 

^Appendix E to Report of Superintendent of Public Instruction for 1853. 



Educational Tendencies in Ontario, 1846-1^06. 107 

in determining the attitude of the Department towards individual 
schools. As in the elementary schools, the high school courses 
of study and the text-books to be used are all prescribed by 
the Department. 

The high schools, though admitting all students who can pass 
the entrance examination, and though controlled to a large 
degree by a popularly elected school board, are not all free 
schools. As is shown in the statistical table given at the end 
of the chapter a considerable part of the revenues of these schools 
is derived from fees. There is a slight general tendency towards 
the abolition of fees either wholly or in the case of resident 
students. However, some sixty per cent of the high schools 
of the Province still require fees of their students.^ 

The need for some provision for the professional training 
of teachers early engaged the attention of Dr. Ryerson. During 
the first of his visits abroad he had occasion to study the 
normal schools of Prussia, and of other continental countries. 
During a brief sojourn in the United States he had also oppor- 
tunity to study the working of the Normal School at Albany, 
New York, then recently founded. The result of all this was 
the establishment in 1847 '^^ ^ Normal School at Toronto, the 
capital of the Province. Shortly afterwards, seven and a half 
acres of land were purchased as a site, and in 1851 the corner- 
stone of a commodious building was laid with appropriate cere- 
monies. Dr. Ryerson's conception of the close relation of religion 
to the work of teaching is illustrated in an inscription, com- 
posed by himself, which was placed upon this stone " This 
Institution, erected by the Enlightened Liberality of Parliament, 
is Designed for the Instruction and Training of School Teachers 
upon Christian Principles."^ 

That Dr. Ryerson's efforts to establish a normal school were 
not sympathetically received in all quarters is illustrated by the 
following extract from a memorial sent to the Provincial Legis- 
lature in 1847 by the Gore District Council. After a reference 
to the school in question as entirely unsuited to a country like 
Canada, the statement is made, " Nor do your memorialists hope 
to provide qualified teachers by any other means in the present 

'See Report of the Minister of Education for 1905, Vol. II, p. 39. 
^Ryerson Memorial Volume, p. 87. 



io8 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

circumstances of the country than securing as heretofore the 
services of those whose physical disabilities from age render 
this mode of obtaining a livelihood the only one suited to their 
decaying energies, or by employing such of the newly arrived 
emigrants as are qualified for common school teachers, year by 
year as they come amongst us, and who will adopt this as a 
means of temporary support until their character and ability 
are known and turned to better account for themselves." This 
memorandum was sent to the various district councils of the 
Province with the hope of securing their concurrence. 

The Colborne District Council, however, took direct issue with 
the arguments just quoted, in the following language, " Nor can 
your Committee reconcile it either with their sense of duty to 
rest satisfied with the services of those whose physical dis- 
abilities from age and decaying energies render them unfit, 
or of those ' newly arrived emigrants ' whose ' unknown char- 
acter and abilities ' render them unable to procure a livelihood 
by any other means than by becoming the preceptors of our 
children, the dictators of their sentiments and manners, the 
guardians of their virtues, and in a high degree the masters 
of their future destinies in this world and the next." Much 
to the credit of the enlightened sentiment of the Province as a 
whole, the attitude of the Colborne District Council was even- 
tually the more popular one, though the reforms for which Dr. 
Ryerson stood so zealously were at times seriously imperiled. 
So closely did his opponents press him at one time (1849) 
that he tendered his resignation. Fortunately for the future wel- 
fare of the Province, the resignation was not accepted and in 
the following year compromise legislation was effected whereby 
his political enemies were appeased without the sacrifice of the 
essential reforms for which he stood. 

For many years the normal school gave academic as well as 
professional instruction. Finally, however, in 1871, it was felt 
that the county grammar schools or high schools as they came 
to be called, were entirely adequate for the academic training 
of teachers. Since that time, consequently, the work of the 
normal school has been confined to the giving of professional 
courses and to the furnishing of opportunity for practice work 
by the teacher in training. The growth of the school system 



Educational Tendencies in Ontario, 1846-1906. 109 

made necessary the establishment in 1875 of a second normal 
school at Ottawa in the Eastern part of the Province. Subse- 
quently a third school was opened at London in Western 
Ontario. 

The work of these three schools is practically identical. The 
requirements for admission are the same — the obtaining of a 
non-professional certificate of a certain specified character at the 
yearly departmental examinations and at least one year of suc- 
cessful teaching upon a third grade professional certificate 
obtained in a manner to be described shortly. At the outset the 
required term of attendance was a half-year, but it was subse- 
quently lengthened to one year. The fact that the Roman Cath- 
olic Separate Schools are an important factor in the public school 
system, numerically and otherwise, has been recognized, though 
not in any formal way, by the maintenance for many years of 
a member of that Communion at the head of the Ottawa Normal 
School. Under the present regulation the successful completion 
of a year's work at a Normal School brings to the candidate 
a second class professional certificate which conveys a perma- 
nent right to teach in the elementary schools of the Province. 
A professional school of a higher grade is the Ontario Normal 
College, situated at Hamilton and established in the early nine- 
ties primarily for the purpose of training teachers for the high 
schools and collegiate institutes of the Province. In this institu- 
tion as in those already mentioned, professional courses are 
given and practice teaching is required. The requirements for 
admission are senior leaving standing (roughly speaking, the 
equivalent of one year's work in college) or graduation in arts 
from any university in the British dominions. Upon the satis- 
factory completion of a year's work, certificates are granted vary- 
ing in character with the academic acquirements possessed by 
the student. 

The maintenance of an institution such as the Normal College 
apart from the Provincial University has for many years been 
felt to be a mistake. In consequence of this feeling provision 
was recently made by an Act of the Provincial Legislature for 
the transforming of the institution in question into a department 
of education in the University. Such a department has recently 
been organized and a Professor of Education chosen. 



no Public Education in Upper Canada. 

The Model School as it at present exists seems to be an 
institution peculiar to the Province of Ontario. Its history may 
be briefly indicated as follows: In 1843 permission was given 
to the municipal authorities of any county to raise by county- 
rate a sum not exceeding i200 and to expend the same in the 
maintenance of a County Model School. The purpose of this 
school was to be the instruction of persons already engaged 
in the work of teaching who were desirous of further perfecting 
themselves in their art. The School Act of 1846 sought to 
promote the efficiency of. these schools by requiring that their 
teachers should be graduates of the Normal School and that 
their students should be granted certificates upon an examination 
by the District Superintendent. 

This early legislation was apparently ineffective, for in a 
circular letter addressed in 1850 to the chief municipal authority 
in each township (the reeve) Dr. Ryerson asserted, " The 
attempts of district councils to establish model schools have 
thus far proved entire failures." The educational legislation of 
1850 sought to remedy the evil by placing the schools under 
township authority. This change, however, brought little im- 
provement. In 1 87 1, with the appointment of County Inspector 
of Schools, came a marked improvement in the Model Schools. 
Under the competent supervision thus provided they proved of 
decided value in furnishing to the beginners in the teaching 
profession a modicum of professional training and of actual 
teaching experience. Up to the present time the model school 
in each county has been attached to the public school in some 
village or town. The principal of the school in question, has, 
as a rule, been the principal of the model school. The course 
has occupied the four months from September till December 
inclusive, and the requirements for admission, the instruction 
to be given, and the details of the management have been pre- 
scribed in detail by the Provincial Department of Education. 
Upon the satisfactory completion of the work and the passing 
of the prescribed examination, the student has been granted a 
third class professional certificate which entitles him to teach 
in the elementary schools of the Province for three years. 

The Model School has for some years, however, been regarded 
as little better than a makeshift. Recentlv the Provincial Gov- 



Educational Tendencies in Ontario, 1846-1^06. iii 

ernment has undertaken to more than double the number of 
normal schools with a view to an eventual total discontinuance 
of the Model School as a part of the provincial educational 
system. This movement is thus described and justified in a recent 
circular from the Minister of Education : 

To increase the efficiency of the teachers, the Government is also pro- 
viding an improved system of professional training in the form of three 
additional Normal Schools for old Ontario and one for new Ontario, at a 
capital cost of more than $250,000, and an increase of the yearly expendi- 
ture for maintenance of more than $60,000. With the addition of a 
Faculty of Education in the Provincial University, which has now been 
arranged for, we shall have, in a couple of years, a complete and modern 
system of training for all grades of teachers. The new scheme of profes- 
sional training will provide for two main grades of Public School teacher 
certificates. First Class and Second Class. The work for First Class 
Teachers and High School Assistants will be taken up in the new Faculty 
of Education in Toronto University ; that for Second Class in the reorgan- 
ized Normal Schools. It is, however, intended to provide in addition 
for the less advanced counties in Old Ontario and the poorer parts of the 
districts, teachers with qualifications corresponding to those of the old 
Third Class certificates (Primary non-professional). The professional 
work for these certificates will be taken up in a few Model Schools which 
will be retained for the purpose and made thoroughly efficient. Such cer- 
tificates will, of course, be confined to the counties and districts concerned, 
and it is hoped will gradually disappear. 

The development of the Provincial University after its secular- 
ization in 1849 has been mainly along two different lines, (i) 
An enlargement of the curriculum and the provision of pro- 
fessional courses to keep pace with the marked scientific and 
industrial progress of the age. (2) An effort to secure the 
affiliation of the other higher institutions of learning in the 
Province with a view to making the University the sole examin- 
ing and degree conferring body (for the higher degrees at least) 
in the Province. There is occasion here to speak of (2) only. 

The movement towards the centralization of the higher edu- 
cation of the Province has been slow and hesitating and with 
various counteracting tendencies from time to time. Even at 
the present time it is far from complete, although important 
steps in that direction have been taken in recent years. 

According to one historian of the Canadian universities, "One 
object in view in the (University) legislation of 1849 was to 
secure the abandonment by the denominational colleges of their 



112 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

University powers and to obtain their co-operation with the 
Provincial Universities in the promotion of secular culture."^ 

The University Act of 1853 sought to further prepare the 
way for the union referred to by divesting the University of 
Toronto of all teaching functions and vesting the latter in a 
new institution known as University College. The model con- 
sulted in this movement was the University of London which, 
itself a secular institution, was planned to act as an examining 
and degree conferring body for various " teaching " colleges. In 
the Act in question provision was made for the affiliation with 
the university of the different denominational universities then 
in existence. The different colleges in question (with the excep- 
tion of Trinity University then recently established by Dr. Stra- 
chan) did actually enter into the relationship mentioned, but " it 
is not known that they ever sent up a student for examination,"^ 
and in a few years the attendance of the heads of these outside 
institutions at the meetings of the University Senate began to 
diminish and shortly decreased altogether. 

There soon developed in the denominational school, instead of 
a spirit of co-operation, a spirit of open hostility to the Pro- 
vincial University. This spirit showed itself in repeated attacks 
on the University management — attacks which led to the appoint- 
ment of a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry which eventually 
gave way to a Commission. This Commission in its report 
recommended various reforms in the financial management of 
the University and a yearly grant to the four denominational 
schools (Queen's, Victoria, Regiopolis and Trinity) of $10,000 
a year with the understanding that the University of Toronto 
should prescribe for them their curricula, conduct their exam- 
inations, and grant their degrees. Nothing was done either by 
the Legislature or by the Government in regard to this report, 
with the exception of an increase to $5,000 a year of the annual 
grant allowed the outlying colleges by the legislature. In 1869 
the annual grant just mentioned was withdrawn and the denomi- 
national schools compelled to look to private sources for their 
support. This, it would appear, was a blessing in disguise, 
since it led to the beginning of a vigorous and independent life 
such as they had never known before. In a few years their 

*Dr. Burwash in Paper read at meetiri'? of Royal Soc. of Canada, 1Q04. 
2Ibid. 



Educational Tendencies in Ontario, 1846-1906. 113 

income from voluntary endowment was greater than had ever 
been received from the pubHc treasury. 

In 1883 the growth of the provincial university had made the 
income from endowment decidedly inadequate. The consequent 
application to the Provincial Legislature for aid provoked strenu- 
ous opposition on the part of the denominational college and 
led to the revival of the " University Federation " scheme. After 
considerable deliberation the plan of federation adopted was 
essentially as follows : 

(i) The heads of the various federating institutions were 
to be members of the University Senate. Each college was to 
have one other representative and the professors of each college 
to have two representatives. 

(2) The University was to assume certain teaching functions 
and provide instruction in Pure Mathematics, Physics, Astron- 
omy, Geology, Mineralogy, Chemistry (pure and applied), 
Zoology, Botany, Physiology, Ethnology (including Comparative 
Philology), History, Logic, and Metaphysics, History of Phil- 
osophy, Italian and Spanish, Political Economy and Civil Politics, 
Jurisprudence, Constitutional Law, and such other sciences, arts 
and branches of knowledge as the Senate of the Provincial 
University might from time to time determine. The remaining 
subjects of the curriculum were to be in the hands of University 
College as one of the federating institutions and such other 
colleges as might become members of the University. 

The principle which guided the division of work was, accord- 
ing to> a competent authority (Chancellor Burwash of Victoria 
University), " that the University should take the sciences, includ- 
ing History and Political Science and the colleges Philosophy 
and Literature. The reasons for this general division were two- 
fold, on the side of the University, which was to be supported 
by the state, the sciences furnished the knowledge provided for 
industrial and political life, and were thus a reasonable matter 
of public provision. On the side of the colleges, philosophy and 
literature furnished material of culture and moral and ethical 
development and thus aflforded them the best field for their 
special work — that of culture and the moral side of education." 
After some seven years of discussion and conflict within the 
Methodist Church itself the General Conference of 1890 voted 
8 



114 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

in favor of federation and in November the final stage in the 
process was completed by the proclamations of the Lieutenant- 
Governor federating Victoria University with the University 
of Toronto. 

The University Act of 1901, besides making material changes 
in the constitution of the University, made special provision for 
the admission of Trinity University into federation and thus a 
schism of over half a century was healed. 

The Provincial University as at present constituted consists 
of the three federating Colleges in Arts — University College, 
Victoria and Trinity ; two professional faculties. Medicine and 
Applied Sciences and Engineering ; thirteen professional schools — 
five in Theology, two in Music, and one each in Law, Pedagogy, 
Agriculture, Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Veterinary Surgery. 

The higher institutionjs of learning which yet remain outside 
of federation, and will probably do so for many years to come, 
are Queen's University at Kingston, a flourishing institution 
under the control of the Presbyterian Church, McMaster Uni- 
versity at Toronto, a Baptist institution, Western University 
at London, under Anglican control, and Ottawa University, a 
Roman Catholic Institution, situated at the Dominion Capital. 

The first mentioned of these schools has within recent years 
received financial aid from the provincial government on the 
ground that the furnishing of higher education along secular 
lines is a public service which demands public recognition and 
support even if the institution furnishing this education is not 
under public control. 

To return to the subject of the Provincial University and to 
conclude this brief, and hence imperfect summary, it may be 
in order to quote a statement from an authoritative source of 
the principles which have guided in the federation movement 
and the results which have thus far been achieved. 

Finally in this common work federation has made the State, the Chris- 
tian Church, and private enterprise and liberality all mutually helpful to 
each other on the sound basis of mutual independence. Public funds have 
very largely provided for the Central University, University College, and 
the School of Practical Science at an outlay of over $4,000,000 on capital 
account, and an annual expenditure of about $180,000. 

Professional enterprise maintains the faculty of medicine at an annual 
cost of $64,000. The Agricultural and Normal Colleges are sustained by 
the state at an annual expenditure of nearly $100,000. The other affiliated 



Educational Tendencies in Ontario, 1846-1906. 115 

professional schools are all the result of private or professional enterprise 
and have involved a capital outlay of $300,000. The other colleges and 
theological schools are the creation of the churches and represent in capital 
over $3,000,000 and an annual expenditure of over $100,000. 

The University of Toronto on the federation principle represents to the 
people of Ontario a combined capital of oyer $7,000,000 and an annual 
expenditure of nearly $500,000 for the higher education of over 3000 
students drawn from all parts of the county and Dominion and even from 
China, Japan, India and Africa, and from Newfoundland and the West 
Indies.* 



* Paper on the history of the University of Toronto, read by Chancellor Burwash at the 
meeting of the Royal Society of Canada, 1904. 



ii6 



Public Education in Upper Canada. 



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ii8 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

Bibliography (Partial) of Works Consulted in Preparing the 

Foregoing. 

BABY, W. L. Souvenirs of the Past ; an instructive and amusing work 
giving an account of the customs and the habits of the pioneers of 
Upper Canada. Windsor, Ontario, 1896. 

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burn, 1842. 

BOURINOT, SIR J. G. The Intellectual Development of the Canadian 
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BRYMNER, DOUGLAS. Reports of Dominion Archivist. 1884-1900. 

BURWASH, NATHANIEL, D. D., LL. D. Egerton Ryerson. In Mak- 
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CANNIFF, WILLIAM. History of the Settlement of Upper Canada. 
Toronto, Dudley & Burns, 1869. 

DENT, J. C, and SCADDING, REV. H., D. D. Semi-Centennial Memo- 
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FIDLER, G. Observations on Professions, Literature, Manners and Emi- 
gration in the United States and Canada Made During a Residence 
there in 1832. New York, J. & J. Harper, 1833. 

GREGG, REV. WILLIAM, D. D. A Short History of the Presbyterian 
Church in the Dominion of Canada from the Earliest Times till 1884. 
Toronto, The Author, 1892. 

HAIGHT, CANNIFF. Country Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago. Per- 
sonal recollections and reminiscences of a sexagenarian. Toronto, 
Hunter, Rose & Co., 1885. 

HODGINS, J. GEORGE, LL. D. Documentary History of Education in 
Upper Canada. 13 vols. 1792-1855. Printed as supplements to vari- 
ous reports of the Minister of Education for Ontario. 

HODGINS, J. GEORGE, LL. D. The Ryerson Memorial Volume, 1889. 
Toronto, Warwick & Sons, 1889. 

HOPKINS, J. CASTELL, ED. Canada — An Encyclopedia of the 
Country. Vol. IV, Sec. 3. The Universities and higher educational 
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JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, THE. First volume, 1848, published by 
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KINGSFORD, W. The History of Canada. 1608-1841. 10 vols. To- 
ronto, Rowsell & Hutchinson, 1887-1898. 

LINDSEY, CHARLES. Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie. 

LIZARS, R. and K. M. In the Days of the Canada Companj^ The set- 
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period, 1825-1850. 

MACKENZIE, WILLIAM LYON. Sketches of Canada and the United 
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Educational Tendencies in Ontario, 1846-1906. 119 

MACKENZIE, WILLIAM LYON. Seventh Report on Grievances, 1832. 
Toronto, M. Reynolds. 

MAC MULLEN, J. The History of Canada. Brockville, McMuUen & 
Co., 1868. 

MESSAGE from His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor, of 30th Jan., 
1836, transmitting a despatch from His Majesty's Government. 
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MORGAN, HENRY JAMES. Sketches of Celebrated Canadians and 
Persons Connected with Canada from the Earliest Period in the 
History of the Province down to the Present Time. Quebec, Hunter, 
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PRESTON, T. R. Three Years' Residence in Canada, from 1837 to 1839. 
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PROCEEDINGS of the Royal Society of Canada, 1904. Article by Na- 
thaniel Burwash, D. D., LL. D., on the History of the University of 
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REPORT and Despatches of the Earl of Durham, Her Majesty's High 
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don, 1839. 

REPORT of a Select Committee upon the complaint contained in an 
address to the King from the House of Assembly, passed 15th April, 
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REPORTS of the Education Department of Ontario, 1845- 1905. 

ROGER, C. The Rise of Canada from Barbarism to Wealth and Civiliza- 
tion. Quebec, P. Sinclair, 1856. 

ROLPH, DR. THOMAS. A Brief Account with Observations on the 
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ROSS, HON. G. W. LL. D. The School System of Ontario. In Internat. 
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RYERSON, REVEREND EGERTON. The Royalists of America and 
Their Times. Toronto, William Briggs, 1880. 

RYERSON, REVEREND EGERTON. The Story of My Life. Being 
reminiscences of sixty years in the public service in Canada. Toronto, 
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SCADDING, REVEREND HENRY, D. D. Toronto of Old. Collec- 
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life of the capital of Ontario. 

SMITH, M. A Geographical View of the British Possessions in North 
America. Baltimore, P. Munro, for the Author, 1814. 



I20 Public Education in Upper Canada. 

STATUTES of various sessions of the Provincial Parliament of Upper 
Canada. 1792-1841. 

STRICKLAND, S. Twenty-seven Years in Canada West, or the Ex- 
perience of an Old Settler. Edited by A. Strickland. London, R. 
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TALBOT, E. A. Five Years' Residence in the Canadas. London, Long- 
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TAYLOR, FENNINGS. The Last Three Bishops Appointed by the 
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people and their future prospects, etc. 2 vols. Philadelphia, H. F. 
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TIMPERLAKE, J. Toronto, Past and Present. Toronto, Peter A. 
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TRAILL, MRS. C. P. S. The Backwoods of Canada, being letters from 
the wife of an emigrant officer. London, C. Knight, 1836. 



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